Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising
by Code 089
Summary: Peace has reigned over Earth for the past 15 years, that peace would soon come to an end. The gods have returned to Earth and the Apocalypse Seal has been broken, triggering the End War. With new friends and enemies, Reaper Alpha and Beta must fight to defend their home from Lucifer's allies and demonic hordes. Book one of the Multiverse Travelers series.
1. Chapter 1: The End War

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 1: The End War

**A/N:** Welcome everyone to Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising. This story is a continuation of Darling in the FranXX: The Reaper Squadron and is set 15 years after Reaper Alpha's return. Peace has reigned for the past 15 years over Earth, but that is all about to change. Seeing as this chapter took about 4 weeks to hash out with my brother I'm not going to set any sort of upload schedule, I'll post the chapters as soon as we are both happy with the way they are worded. I do have another story for Irregular at Magic High School sitting on the back burner so if the time between updates gets to be too long I'll post a chapter of that story to fill the void. With the nuts and bolts out of the way, Enjoy!

* * *

Earth. Once, nothing more than an inhospitable desert world courtesy of APE, was now a thriving world once more. It had been 15 years since Reaper Alpha returned. and the human population had started to expand across the globe once more. With this new age of exploration, came the discovery of lost technologies as well as the rediscovery of religion.

Despite APE's best efforts, APE was unable to destroy the original religious structure of the old world. As such, as humans began to expand to spread out once more, they discovered several old temples hailing to the original gods. Being the resident experts, the people turned to Reaper Alpha for an explanation as for what the temples were for. In short order, Reaper and his squad had identified to which god the temples were dedicated to and, since Papa turned out to be a false god leaving the humans with no god to turn to, humanity decided to worship the old gods once more.

Speaking of Reaper Alpha, in the time that had passed since they returned, the family of Reapers had expanded. Each member of Reaper Alpha had gotten married, with Reaper and Havana renewing their vows since Zero Two pretty much demanded that Reaper and Havana get married again since everyone else had, and had children of their own. Reaper and Havana had a daughter, Crow and Raven, a son, James and Owl, a daughter, Snake and Ikuno, also a daughter, and strangely enough, Cypress and Naomi, a son, although Reaper had yet to get an answer as to how that one happened yet.

All had been calm for the past 15 years. For the most part, the gods had been content to let humanity be, there was the occasional issue here and there, but they had been quickly resolved before it affected humanity. But that moment of peace was about to come to an end as an old feud was about to come to a head.

Reaper was in his home office, pouring over the design plans for an obscure type of energy generator, when his daughter, Amelia, walked in. Amelia was 15 and she had Reaper's blond hair, although longer, and Havana's royal purple eyes and stood at about 5' 7''. Amelia was the leader of the little group that had formed from Reaper Alpha's children as well as Zero Two's daughter. She had taken to calling their little group Reaper Gamma in keeping with the Reaper tradition as well as the fact that they had powers of their own.

Each one of Reaper Alpha's children had powers, specifically, Umbrakinesis. When Havana heard about this, she was of a mixed opinion while Reaper was happy but confused as to how it happened. When Reaper inquired Death about why they were umbrakinetics, he explained that umbrakinesis was, in fact, hereditary. While Amelia and the others would not be as strong as Reaper and the others since they did not have Death's blessing, with training, they could be powerful umbrakinetics, training that Reaper was happy to provide when they asked for it.

When Amelia walked in, Reaper turned around to face her and saw that Gythin was sitting on her shoulder. Gythin was a shadow construct of a miniature dragon that Amelia had made when she was six. Gythin was unique in that, it was a living shadow construct with its own intelligence. Most shadow constructs can't think for themselves and need commands from their creator as well as a constant source of shadow energy. Gythin, however, did what she wanted with no commands from Amelia and, after monitoring her energy levels over several weeks, Reaper determined that Gythin took no energy from Amelia, instead she got her energy from regular food. It reminded Reaper of Draco, the black dragon he had found a couple of centuries ago. Draco had disappeared shortly before Havana died, and Reaper often wondered where he went.

"Dad, do you have a moment?" Amelia asked.

"Of course, Amelia, and hello Gythin." Reaper said, and the miniature dragon bowed her head and lifted her wings in greeting.

"Why hasn't that storm gotten any closer?" she asked.

The storm she was referring to was one that had appeared in the east several weeks ago. It had acted like a normal storm system at first, until it rapidly approached Gran Crevasse about 4 days ago and halted its movement. There was no rain from the storm, just the occasional odd rumble of thunder.

Reaper looked out the window toward the storm. "I don't know. It's something that we will have to look into later." He responded.

"We? Is this another order from Death?" she asked.

"No, just something to satisfy my curiosity."

Red lightning flashed through the clouds and Reaper suddenly became uneasy.

"_Lightning is never red unless… oh no."_ Reaper thought, his mind turning to the one reason he hadn't considered yet.

Reaper saved his work and stood up from his chair. He held out his right hand and summoned Harvester.

"Dad?" she questioned.

"On second thought, this needs to be dealt with this now. Grab your friends and go to Zero Two's house. Tell her something has come up and we will be back in a while." He said, and Amelia scurried off.

…

**The Divine Council Chamber**

The Creator and Lucifer were glaring at each other across the room while the others sat in a tense silence. The Creator had called an emergency meeting but had yet to explain why, although judging by the looks that he was giving Lucifer, it had something to do with him.

"_Mind explaining this, Lucifer?"_ The Creator said and gestured to the swirling blue viewing portal that sat in the center of the chamber.

In the portal it showed the storm outside of Gran Crevasse as well as what was below it. The storm spanned several miles and, hidden beneath its dark clouds, lay an army of demons.

"_I'm merely claiming what is mine."_ Lucifer said smugly.

"_Earth is not yours to claim, Lucifer."_ The Creator said. _"It is designated neutral ground due to humanity's existence on it."_

"_Not for long."_ Lucifer replied.

A woman with long brunette hair and white wings then spoke. If her attire was anything to suggest, she had a love of pink.

"_We agreed that any claims on Earth were forbidden until the seal was broken, Lucifer."_ The woman said.

"_Ah, but the seal has been broken Love." _Lucifer replied, causing the woman to gasp and glance at the Creator.

The Creator sighed. _"It was necessary to prevent the entirety of humanity from dying at the hands of the VRIM. We nearly lost Earth a million years ago when they first arrived due to our inaction and I was not about to allow history to repeat itself."_

"_Why wait until now to attack then?" _A giant of a man with bright red hair and beard and arms the size of tree trunks said. _"You've never been one to delay when an opportunity arose, so why now?"_

"_And why did you think it prudent to break the seal and release Death from his prison?!"_ A woman wearing a dress the color of grass and blue hair cried.

"_I attack now, Will,"_ Lucifer said. _"because humanity now has some use to me."_

The man now known as Will raised a skeptical eyebrow as Luck attempted to calm the blue haired woman down.

"_Calm yourself Life. Death was the reason that Earth was not lost and the reason the threat to its continued existence has been eliminated. He has caused no undue harm since his release."_ Lady Luck said.

"_Favoritism." _Life muttered.

"_It is not favoritism. It is the willingness to move past old grudges, something it seems you have yet to learn to do."_ Luck retorted.

Life muttered something under her breath.

"_I heard that."_ Death said, appearing in the room.

"_Ah there you are Death."_ The Creator said. _"Please, take a seat."_

"_I won't be staying long. I have other matters to attend to."_ Death replied, sitting next to Will.

"_Yes, because collecting the souls of innocents is more important than attending a council meeting." _Life replied.

"_Yes, it is. I still have several billion souls to track down from the destruction of the VRIM homeworld."_ Death replied, causing Life to shut up.

"_Death." _The Creator said. _"What is your opinion on this?"_ The Creator gestured down to the viewing portal.

Death looked down at the portal and saw the awaiting demon army. He then looked Lucifer dead in the eyes.

"_I believe you are about to make a big mistake, Lucifer."_ Death said.

"_What are you implying Death?" _Lucifer asked.

"_As you know, I stay out of the squabbles that you two get in, especially since one of those ended up with me imprisoned in the Shadow Realm until very recently." _Death glared at Lucifer.

"_Death,"_ Love said with a sigh. _"that decision came at the agreement of the entire council. I'm not saying that you were in the wrong for that event, but blame cannot be placed on one person."_

"_It can." _Death said, sending a heated glare at Life. _"But that is a topic for another time. As I was saying, I stay out of any fights between you two for obvious reasons, however, what my servants choose to do is another matter entirely."_

"_Death."_ Lucifer growled in warning.

"_You placed a demon horde outside a city with 8 of my servants in it whose job is to contain or eliminate escaped souls. What are demons outside of hell but souls attempting to escape eternal torment."_

…

**Earth**

"Demons." Reaper growled.

Hordes of demons could be seen setting up a camp beneath the storm. They easily numbered in the thousands and were armed to the teeth. This wasn't a single escaped horde, this was a legion.

"Reaper, what the hell is going on?" Owl asked.

"The Apocalypse Seal. Oh no." Havana whispered in horror.

"What are you talking about?" James asked.

"The Apocalypse Seal was broken during our first battle with the VRIM remember? It's what allowed master to aid us on the battlefield." Raven said.

"Snake," Cypress said slowly. "didn't the Apocalypse Seal have some strings attached to it?"

"Major strings." Snake said solemnly. "That had the End War clause tied to it."

Reaper cursed. "Fall back, now. We are going to need some help on this one."

As the group retreated, Crow looked back and saw that they had been spotted.

"Reaper, we've been seen." He said.

Just then a war horn sounded behind them and Reaper cursed again.

"Keep running. We will deal with whoever they send after us after we are farther away."

As they retreated out of the storm Reaper looked back and saw that they were pursued by a mixture of 20 lesser demons and imps. Lesser demons were a 150 pounds of dumb muscle. They stood a little taller than the height of a man and, like all demons, had blood red skin. Lesser demons were just under warlords in terms of demon rankings. Their primary weapon was their sheer strength and the black claws they had on their hands. Imps were below lesser demons in ranking and stood at about waist height. They were even less intelligent, if it were possible, than a lesser demon, relying on their agility as well as their ability to conjure and throw fireballs to take out targets.

Turning around, Reaper drew Harvester and began attacking the nearest demon. Reaper hated demons, they were the souls of the damned that had taken on a physical form. The only thing they craved was destruction and watching everything burn. Being a Reaper, they had a great hatred for them as well as, more often than not, they were responsible for their deaths.

Reaper killed his demon first and spat on the corpse as it burned away before going toward the next. Demons, as a rule, were impossible to kill with normal weapons, their thick scaly hide caused bullets and swords to bounce right off them. Only Angelic Metal or their shadow weapons, which were made from a divine element called Cosminium, could kill them. Reaper was going to have to find a way to give Hachi and Nana weapons to deal with them, if the End War was indeed on the horizon.

Reaper and his squad killed the last of the demons and made sure they were dead before running back to Gran Crevasse. As they entered the city proper, a bright light shown from the heavens and several winged beings descended above the city.

"Angels." Havana said.

Angels. The Creator's holy army against Lucifer's demonic hordes. They resided in Heaven, the Creator's domain and final resting place for souls deemed 'good enough' by the Cosmic Scales. There were six tiers of angels; at the top, were the rarely seen six winged Seraphim, they made up the Angelic Council and were the Creator's most trusted servants. Next were the four-winged Cherubim, the Creator's generals, after them were the archangels and finally the standard angel.

As the angels descended over the city the storm clouds that covered the demon legion advanced and quickly covered Gran Crevasse. The clouds rumbled ominously.

"We need to get to Ichigo, now." Reaper said. "She is going to need the support when the envoys come calling."

"Agreed." Snake said.

Just as they approached the capitol, the clouds rumbled again as a bolt of red lightening lanced down toward Reaper. The angels, who had quickly formed a perimeter around Gran Crevasse, acted without hesitation, raising their arms and causing a shimmering white dome to settle over the city, blocking the bolt.

"It seems I've made someone angry." Reaper muttered as more red lightning bolts pounded at the angelic shield.

A loud explosion was heard as sky turn green. All activity stopped as everyone turned their eyes skyward, waiting in tense silence. The city seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what happened next.

Then the war horns were heard.

"_Lucifer has declared war! Prepare yourselves!"_ an angel shouted their voice echoing across the city.

"To the capitol, now." Reaper growled as Reaper Alpha advanced once more.

As they entered the capitol building Ichigo came running up to them.

"Reaper, what the hell was that sound? And why are there angels here?" Ichigo asked.

"There are many aspects of the gods that we have yet to inform you of due to lack of time. This is one that we were hoping we would never have to deal with." Crow said.

"What are you talking about?" Ichigo asked.

"All will be explained in time." Owl said. "Right now, we need to get you prepared for a royal visitor, come Ichigo."

Owl, Cypress, Havana, and Raven pulled Ichigo away all the while Ichigo was asking question after question.

Reaper signaled the guys to make their way to Ichigo's office as they waited to see who would show up first.

…

**Divine Council Chamber**

"_As I said, Lucifer,"_ Death said. _"you are making a big mistake. I may stay out of your fights, but I will not order my Reapers to stay out as well."_

Lucifer growled and sent a bolt of lightning down Earth, intent upon killing Reaper Alpha where they stood. When the Creator's angels conjured the shield around the city, Lucifer sent blast after blast at the shield, intent on shattering it and removing the threat that Reaper Alpha presented.

"_You will not break through my angel's shield, Lucifer. Stop at once and surrender." _The Creator said.

Lucifer growled and, in his rage, did something that he would later regret. He struck out at the Creator.

Hellfire met a divine shield in an explosion that rocked the council chamber. Lucifer had not been holding back when he launched the attack and the resulting explosion destroyed a quarter of the room. When the dust finally settled, everyone was staring at Lucifer in shock as the implications of what he just did settled in.

"_You struck first Lucifer."_ The Creator said._ "You have just declared war."_

Lucifer was then blasted out of the council chamber by a white beam of energy from the Creator. Hands crackling with energy, he followed Lucifer out.

"_This is all your fault Death!"_ Life cried, slamming her hands onto the table. _"If you had just stayed in your prison, we wouldn't be in this situation!"_

"_And allow Earth to be destroyed by the VIRM? I think not."_ Death retorted.

"_I agree with Death."_ Will said. _"If it hadn't been for his intervention, Earth would have been lost."_

_Would it though?"_ A woman wearing a white kimono said, her icy blue eyes glancing at Death. _"If the issue had been brought to our attention, I'm sure myself or one of my brothers or sisters could have easily handled the situation."_

"_Yeah, I would have been able to take them on no problem." _A man with bright yellow hair said. _"Death didn't need to be freed."_

"_By the Creator, here we go again." _Love said, facepalming. _"You cannot do everything Lightning."_

"_Sure, I can, Love."_ Lightning said with a wink.

"_Oh really?"_ A willowy man with hair the color of leather said sarcastically.

The meeting quickly devolved into heated arguments between the other gods. Just by listening in on the arguments, Death was able to determine who would support who. For Lucifer it was Life, Lightning, Ice, Water, Fire, Air, and Earth. For the Creator, it was Will, Knowledge, Emotion, Love, and his Riders. The only person unaccounted for at this point was Luck and Misfortune.

Speaking of Luck, she was approaching Death now.

"_So where is it that you stand, Luck?"_ Death asked.

"_I believe that we will follow your example and stay out of this." _Luck said.

"_And Misfortune agrees with this?"_

"_Of course. Much like death, luck and misfortune affect both sides, so it is best if we do not play favorites."_

"_Good. I would hate to see Misfortune as an enemy."_

"_That you would." _Luck chuckled.

After a short pause to listen to the rising arguments, Death continued.

"_I trust your Chosen is doing well?"_ Death asked as if on a leisurely stroll and not in the middle of a room full of arguing divine beings.

"_Well enough." _She replied. _"He's currently out on a garden world waiting for our return. We were in transit to another planet and it was the safest place we could put him when the Creator called for the emergency meeting."_

"_Although I think I know the answer, what will he choose when presented the options?"_

Luck crossed her arms and huffed, causing her rather impressive bust to bounce. _"Unless we force him to go back to Earth, he won't be participating in this war. We hate to leave him alone out in the vacuum of space, but we need to be here for the war, the Creator would have our head if we weren't."_

If Death had eyebrows they would be raised right now. _"From your tone in that sentence, I take it the boy has left you rather… unsatisfied?"_

"_I don't know what you're talking about." _Luck said with a blush.

"_Your face says otherwise."_ Death placed a hand on her shoulder. _"Don't worry Luck, he'll come around."_

"_I hope so." _Luck muttered.

"_You never told me the boy's name."_

"_Um, another time perhaps."_ Luck said nervously. _"I'm afraid I must be going, farewell Death."_

Luck vanished from the council room in what Death thought was embarrassment. This cause him to chuckle. Whoever the boy was, he pitied him for having to deal with two opposing personalities. With Luck being the first to leave, the other gods soon followed suit, some saying their goodbyes to Death while others sent him condescending looks or glares.

Death looked down at the still active viewing portal. It showed the angels reinforcing the protective barrier around the Gran Crevasse and an archangel approaching the capitol building as a group of three riders departed from the demon encampment carrying an envoy flag.

"_Now it is your turn, Ichigo." _Death muttered. _"What path will you choose for humanity?"_

…

**Earth**

Reaper and his squad were spread about Ichigo's office, hidden in the shadows. They expected the first envoy to arrive any minute and were prepared if things were to get out of hand. The female half of Reaper Alpha had taken Ichigo to change into a beautiful traditional kimono. It was a dark violet that slowly faded to black and was dotted with falling white flowers. The kimono was, once again, courtesy of Havana's massive clothing closet.

The sound of metal heels walking down the hallway gave away which envoy arrived first. The angels had gotten their envoy to the capitol first which relieved Reaper a bit. Angels were the more level headed of the two groups when it came to negotiations and treaty signing. Demons tended to try and cow their enemies into submission at the negotiation table. A knock was heard on the door.

"Enter." Ichigo said.

In walked a Cherubim with four beautiful white wings. She was wearing the light armor version of the angelic armor. She wore a white breastplate which covered her breasts and part of her stomach and white vambraces. She wore white thigh high boots, white greaves and a white armored skirt. She knelt before Ichigo and bowed her head.

"Thank you, Leader of Humanity for allowing us to reside within your walls. I am Zuriel, general and envoy of the Creator." The now named Zuriel said.

Ichigo was confused, she didn't understand why this Cherubim was bowing to her, of all people. While she was the current leader of humanity, she was not ranked higher than a Cherubim, it should be her bowing to Zuriel, not the other way around. Reaper saw Ichigo's confusion and used her shadow to explain to her what was going on. Unfortunately, Zuriel saw Ichigo's shadow rise from the ground and whisper in her ear.

"_Ichigo, angels work on a system of honor and chivalry reminiscent of the medieval era. Since we exist outside of their hierarchy of rank they treat us differently than they do other angels. In your case, since you are the leader of humanity, they view you as our 'queen' and that puts you above a Cherubim in their hierarchy. So, they treat you as someone of a higher rank and nobility even though that is not your official title among humans."_

Zuriel tensed as she saw Ichigo's shadow rise and speak to her. She slowly began to draw her sword and Reaper Alpha summoned their weapons when they saw Zuriel drawing her sword. If Zuriel wanted a fight, they would gladly give one to her. Fortunately, this would not be the case.

"Show yourself, deceiver." Zuriel said, glaring about the room. "I know you're here."

"How can one deceive when they speak naught but the truth." Reaper said as they stepped out of the shadows.

Zuriel looked shocked. "Death's Riders? When did you reappear again? The last report the Angel Command received stated that you 6 had disappeared." She gestured to Reaper, Owl, Cypress, Snake, Crow and Raven. "And you two had died a few years before they disappeared." Zuriel pointed to Havana and James.

"Well as they say, rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated." Reaper replied with a chuckle.

"State your business, Zuriel, we are running out of time." Havana said.

"My apologies." Zuriel said before turning back to Ichigo and getting down to business. "I come on the behalf of the Creator to request your assistance in the End War."

"End War?" Ichigo queried.

Zuriel glanced at Reaper. "You didn't tell her?"

"Unlike you, we were hoping this day wouldn't come, not in their lifetimes at least." Raven said.

"You should have expected this, this is Lucifer we're talking about." Zuriel said before turning back to Ichigo.

"Since they have neglected to explain what the End War is, I will do so." Zuriel said.

Zuriel pulled a golden disk out of her skirt and activated it. An image of the Apocalypse Seal appeared in the air above the disk, spinning slowly.

"This is the Apocalypse Seal. This Seal was forged as a treaty between the gods as a ceasefire with the added clause of keeping Death chained to the Shadow Realm." Zuriel said.

Raven glared at the seal. "The Death clause was complete bullshit. That woman had no business trying to do what she was doing. Master was not in the wrong."

Zuriel glared back at her. "The addition of the Death clause came at the agreement of the entire council. Since the last fight between Heaven and Hell was caused by Death, it is only fair he faced punishment for causing the war."

"That woman was the one to propose the clause in the first place!" Owl shouted. "She shouldn't have been able to propose a clause to the Seal because she was the reason master had to get involved in the first place!"

"Enough." Reaper said.

Zuriel turned back toward Ichigo and cleared her throat. "Continuing." She said. "The Apocalypse Seal was broken by the Creator toward the end of the Human-Klaxo-VRIM war to keep humanity from falling to the VIRM. The breaking of this seal is what allowed Death to come to your aid and turn the fight in your favor. However, the breaking of this seal also triggered the End War. The End War, as decreed by the Fates, is the final fight between Heaven and Hell. It is when the limiters that are normally placed on the gods when they enter the mortal plane are removed and they fight at full strength. I have come on the behalf of the Creator to ask for your assistance in the End War."

"What do you mean by aid?" Ichigo asked. "We have not the manpower or supplies to devote to war."

"Nor do we expect you to." Zuriel replied. "The Creator has decided that, if you side with him, humanity will be left out of the war aside from any contributions you decide to make. No, the only thing we require from you is a place to get up our bases of operation for earthy battles. Other than that, we will handle the rest."

"Earthly battles?" Goro asked, he had walked in during Zuriel's explanation of the End War but had kept quiet until now.

"Yes, the End War has two battlegrounds. The first is here on Earth, where us mortals will wage war, and space, where the gods will wage their battles, unrestrained. The first fight will be on Earth, where our army will repel the demon currently camped outside your walls. But after that, most godly battles will occur out in the Solar System, to reduce the damage done to the Earth."

"Most battles?" Ichigo asked.

"Most, yes. There may be some godly battles here on Earth, but they should be few and far between and far reduced in strength."

"Why is that?"

"That is due to the Fates." Snake said, catching everyone's attention. "When it was decided that Earth would be the cradle of humanity, the Fates placed a special ward on the planet, one even the gods have yet to figure out. This ward half's the power of any divine entity that enters the Earth's atmosphere and there are no exceptions to this rule. There are workarounds, of course, us being one such example.

"What do you mean?" Goro asked.

"Remember when we went into our full release states when the VRIM first appeared?" Snake asked.

"Yes, and it was terrifying." Ichigo said with a shudder.

"When we are in that state, we could be considered pseudo-Death's, but our powers are not halved. Since we are still humans and not divine entities, the ward does not trigger, allowing us to fight like a full powered Death."

"I see, thank you Snake." Ichigo said.

"You're welcome." He responded.

Ichigo looked at Zuriel. "In response to your request, Zuriel, on behalf of humanity, I choose to side with the Creator for the End War."

Zuriel bowed to Ichigo. "Thank you, I will send your response to the Creator at once. May the Creator guide you."

Zuriel bowed to Ichigo once more and made to walk out the door but Reaper stopped her.

"Stand fast, Zuriel. We have incoming." Reaper said as he heard several heavy footsteps approach the office.

Reaper and Havana stood to the left of Ichigo's chair while Zuriel took to the right as the rest of Reaper Alpha fanned out behind them.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

A heavy fist slammed into the office door three times before it opened and in walked Lucifer's envoys which was a group of three demons. The first two were imps, there short stature being a dead giveaway, the third, however, was undoubtedly a warlord. He was tall, at least 7'5'' if not taller and wore bone armor. He had long obsidian claws, two polished black horns on his head and a thick red hide that was covered in scars. To top it all off, he had a Stygian iron sword strapped to his back.

Stygian iron was a rare metal that was only found in Hell. The ore had to be heated to a toasty 5,000 degrees Celsius and it took several weeks just to forge one weapon. A Stygian iron weapon was almost as strong as a Cosminium weapon, the main difference being who forged the weapon and the rarity of the metal in question. While one could call Stygian iron rare and not be wrong, it was nothing compared to the rarity of Cosminium. Finding Cosminium this late in the universe's creation would be next to impossible as Cosminium only exists in the heart of a collapsing O type star. Also, Cosminium is a divine element, something that cannot be forged by mortal hands, unlike Stygian iron which can be forged by anyone with the right skills.

"State your business, demon." Havana growled.

"We come to offer protection." The demon rumbled. "If you pledge your allegiance to Lord Lucifer, we will grant you power, the power to easily stomp out those who would see your race stagnate and eventually collapse back to the apes you once were. All we require are some food supplies and raw materials from your people in return."

"You speak naught but honeyed lies demon." Zuriel said. "Lucifer does not offer protection, he offers the shortest route to the destruction of everything humanity has built. Humanity has chosen its side. Begone!"

"Zuriel." The warlord rumbled. "You are a fool if you think Lord Lucifer will lose to a peace-loving fool, a love-struck woman, A race that is only just starting to regather its bearings and three isolationists. You and your ilk had best surrender now while we are still willing to make your death's painless."

Reaper Alpha summoned their weapons. Reaper then spoke,

"You're toeing a very thin line, Warlord. Continue, and you will experience death a second time."

"A Rider?" The Warlord muttered. "This changes things considerably. We do not have the forces to beat 8 of Death's Chosen on top of the angels and the Creator. Retreat is the best option here."

"Fine." The Warlord said aloud. "It is obvious that Humanity has chosen to side with the Creator. Farewell mortals. Come you two."

The Warlord turned and began to walk toward the door but the imps that were with him apparently didn't agree with his decision. With a screech the two leapt at Ichigo, determined to rip her apart. They never stood a chance. One met it's end by being decapitated by Zuriel's holy sword while the other was stabbed through the gut before being sliced in half by Harvester, the blood and bodies soon turning to nothing more than ash on the floor.

At the sound of his companions' bodies hitting the floor, the Warlord looked back over his shoulder and spoke one last time.

"I am a Warlord that knows when it is best to fight and when it is best to retreat. As you have just seen, most of my brethren will not show you any mercy, I hope you don't regret your decision." He then lumbered out the door and slammed it shut behind him.

…

**Divine Council Chamber**

"_That went as well as expected." _Death muttered as the demon left.

Death was alone in the damaged council chamber, the other gods having already taken their leave to prepare for the war.

"_That was an extremely odd warlord." _Death thought. _"Most would have threatened Ichigo if she hadn't agreed to Lucifer's offer and he also understood that my Riders were a threat that they couldn't beat. There is something off about him and I will need to keep an eye on him."_

A swirling white portal opened to Death's right and the Creator walked through, dusting off his clothing.

"_Well, that's Lucifer subdued, for now."_ The Creator looked around the damaged room. _"What happened while I was occupied with him?"_

Death shrugged. _"Life immediately blamed me for you two get in a fight. Will came to my defense and everything went downhill from there."_

"_Whose loyalties lie where?"_

_For Lucifer, he's got Life as well as the Elementals and you have Will, Emotion, Knowledge, Love, my Reapers as well as Humanity."_

"_Since you didn't name them, Luck and Misfortune chose the same path as you?"_

Death nodded.

The Creator sighed. _"Well I am a bit outnumbered but Humanity as well as your Reapers will certainly help. Funny that it shaped up exactly like our last war did."_

"_That was the main topic of the argument after you left so it didn't surprise me."_

The Creator looked down at the still active viewing portal. It was currently showing a rather odd sight, part of the demonic legion was apparently leaving the area and heading toward the west.

"_What's going on there, I wonder?"_ The Creator muttered.

"_If I had to guess, it would be the demonic envoy that Lucifer sent to Humanity making a strategic retreat."_ Death said. _"He was a rather unique warlord, he had a higher thought process than most warlords and knew that, with my Reapers added to your forces, there would be no chance of winning with their current forces."_

"_Hmm. Could he be a Fallen?"_

"_Not a chance." _Death said, shaking his head. _"The Fallen can't disguise their presence from me, the soul cannot lie, and his soul read nothing but demon. And besides, the Fallen are sworn to help Lucifer so they wouldn't retreat in the first place."_

"_Perhaps you are right." _The Creator said. _"However, I want you to keep an eye on him. Demons, even the ones of warlord and above, only have a basic intelligence. For a demon to understand strategy and know when to retreat against a hopeless battle is…unnerving. It's too similar to the Fallen."_

"_Agreed."_

Both Death and the Creator looked down at the viewing portal and simply watched for a while. The Creator then spoke.

"_The first battle will be at dawn, I will see you there I presume?"_

"_Where there are souls to collect, I will be there."_

...

**Earth**

After Zuriel left, Ichigo immediately scheduled a press conference to inform the people as to what was happening. Angels had appeared in the other human cities as well and surrounded them with the same shimmering shield that they had around the Gran Crevasse although the only demons that showed up were at Gran Crevasse.

As Ichigo explained what was going on, many of the people were afraid of getting into another war so soon after getting out of another, but a quick explanation from Reaper and Ichigo that humanity was taking on a supportive roll helped to smooth things over. Gran Crevasse would serve as the hub of angel operations with the angels building their HQ just outside the city. There would be bases in the other cities as well, but all collected information as well as orders would flow into and out of Gran Crevasse.

The angel's first priority, aside from building their HQ, was preparing Gran Crevasse, and to a lesser extent the other cities, for the End War. Gran Crevasse and the other human cities were not designed with war in mind, thus they had no defenses should they be attacked, something the angels sought to remedy. There was already a large army of angel engineers and builders working with the city designers, minus Reaper as he didn't design Gran Crevasse, to get part of a defensive wall built around the city for the upcoming battle, as well as working with Hachi, who oversaw defense, to determine the best placement of anti-demon weapons. As an added security measure, in case they didn't get the wall built in time, several groups of angels were summoning massive stone golems to help guard the city until the defenses were in place.

…

Ichigo had called Reaper and his squad as well as the rest of Reaper Beta to discuss how things were going to go from here on out as well as figure out a battle plan for the upcoming fight, and it was here that Reaper was having to put his foot down.

"No Ichigo." Reaper said.

"But…" Ichigo started to protest.

"No buts. You guys are staying out of this."

Ichigo and the others wanted to help fight in the upcoming battle and Reaper had to tell them no, it was too much of a risk to take. The only one he would trust to go up against a demon is Zero Two, but even then, he would be extremely hesitant to let her go.

"Why? You've seen that we are proficient in combat so why do you refuse to let us go?" Ikuno asked.

Snake sighed, he was hoping to avoid this argument. "Ikuno, love, we know that you guys are excellent fighters, but this is a different battle entirely, there's too much risk in allowing you to go and I don't want to lose you."

"Too much risk?!" Zorome said. "We fought against Klaxosaurs, hell, we fought in space against and army of VRIM and were fine! We can handle this!"

"No, you can't Zorome." Havana said. "The only thing that can pierce demon hide is Angelic Metal or our scythes. Bullets don't affect them, and conventional weaponry would just bounce right off. And," Havana quickly cut off Zorome who was about to interject. "Even if Ichigo hadn't banned Magma Energy, it wouldn't have done anything more than annoy them."

"Please, think about this." Crow said. "Remember what Zuriel said? When the gods come to the mortal plane, they have a limiter placed on them to reduce their power, that limiter is now gone. The only saving grace Earth has is that the ward is still in place, but that only halves the power of the god in question. No one has ever seen a god fight at full power and lived to tell the tale that alone should tell you the destructive power each one contains. Are you sure that you want to go up against that?"

"If that's not enough, think of your families." Raven said. "You have children who are dependent on you and need you. You can't just abandon them in order to help us fight."

"You all have families too!" Zero Two said. "Are you not abandoning them?"

"Yes, we have families." Reaper said. "But they also know that this is part of our work for Death and understand that we have to do this. Also, think about this Zero Two, if we were to fall on the field of battle, the first people our children will turn to, are you guys. If all of us are on the battlefield and die, who will they turn to then? Who will make sure they stay safe should things go wrong?"

Zero Two looked down, she hadn't thought of that.

"We aren't mocking your ability to fight." Cypress said. "We are simply being overly concerned for your wellbeing. If you were go out onto that battlefield with us, you won't come back. We've fought against demons long before we were frozen, and we can assure you, demons aren't like Klaxosaurs or even VRIM, they don't give an inch."

Hiro glanced around at the others who all had the same worried look on their faces.

"Alright, I think I speak for the group here when I say we will stay."

The rest of Reaper Beta nodded.

"I'll see if I can get the angels to set up a Holocaster in Ichigo's office, so you guys can see how the battle is progressing." Snake said, which gave the others some assurance.

Zero Two walked up to Reaper, worry written all over her face.

"Reaper." She said.

"Yes, Zero Two?"

"Promise me that you guys will come back."

"We promise."

…

**The Next Morning**

The next morning, just before dawn, Reaper Alpha stood at the forefront of the angelic army, weapons drawn. Several thousand angels and come to fight off the demon horde and along with Reaper Alpha, they stood a good chance of victory, as long as Lucifer remained occupied.

The main strategy for this battle was to keep Lucifer occupied with the Creator while everybody else helped wipe out the demons. It was key to keep Lucifer occupied because, if he wasn't, he could easily eliminate several dozen angels without a sweat. This also prevented him from summoning more demons should he realize that he was beginning to lose.

The storm that shielded the demon horde from sight had faded late yesterday evening, allowing the angels to see exactly how many demons they were facing as well as what type. The army was made up of mostly imps and lesser demons with a smattering of warlords here and there to direct the army. It was Reaper Alpha's task to eliminate the warlords before assisting the Creator, although Reaper was not averse to taking a few cheap shots at Lucifer.

The two armies faced each other waiting in tense silence. The demons were growling at the angels while Reaper Alpha was making any demon who looked at them regret doing so. White light shown from the heavens as the Creator descended, floating just above his army. Silence prevailed again before a red portal appeared just above the demonic army, Lucifer stepping out moments later. The two gods glared at each other for a moment before the Creator spoke.

"_This is your last chance Lucifer. I am willing to let this transgression go if you surrender and recall your army to Hell. Refuse, and you will be annihilated."_

"_Hmph. As if a peace-loving fool like you could defeat me."_ Lucifer replied.

The demons sounded their war horns as the Creator and Lucifer began to fight.

"Attack!" A demon shouted, and the horde rushed forward.

"Release authorized!" Reaper shouted as he made a B-line toward the nearest warlord.

"Charge!" Zuriel shouted and the angel's advanced.

The battle quickly dissolved into chaos. Reaper and his squad sliced through any demon stood in their way as they made their way to the various warlords while the angels and demons fought all around them. Up above, the Creator and Lucifer destroyed huge swaths of landscape as the two battled for dominance. Back near Gran Crevasse, the stone golems dealt with any demons that attempted to break into the city as a small group of angel rifleman took care of any that, somehow, managed to get past the golems.

Unfortunately, about halfway through the battle, Lucifer realized that he was losing. Lucifer growled and hit the Creator with a particularly strong blast of Hellfire that nocked the Creator away. Lucifer raised his hands and red energy began to gather between them, behind his army, near the tree of the forest that surrounded Gran Crevasse, obsidian began to grow out of the ground, creating the framework for a portal. Once it was complete, Lucifer fired the hell energy that he had been collecting at the framework, completing the portal. Reaper saw what Lucifer was doing too late.

"NO!" Reaper shouted and fired a wave of shadow energy at Lucifer.

The shadow wave arrived just a second too late. The hell energy condensed into a ball before expanding to fill the framework, forming a swirling portal. Lucifer began to laugh as a veritable flood of lesser demons and imps came pouring out of the portal. They quickly began to overwhelm the angels.

"_Reaper Alpha, priority orders, close that portal."_ Death said. _"Limiter removal authorized."_

"Limiter removal authorized!" Reaper shouted as shadow began to condense around him. "Reaper Alpha, close that portal!"

Reaper slammed the butt of Harvester into the ground releasing an army of shadow creatures to attack the demons. While it stemmed the tide somewhat, it was not enough. Even as their respective elements gathered around them, slaying any demon in their path, Reaper Alpha was still having trouble getting to the hell portal.

Lucifer kept laughing. _"If you think this collection of shadow creatures as well as your full removal states will be enough to defeat my endless army, think ag-ack!"_ Lucifer was cut off has he was hit in the face by a white mace and was sent flying, Lucifer forgot about the Creator.

"_Get back here, I'm not done with you."_ The Creator said as he chased after Lucifer.

And the battle raged on.

…

It was an uphill battle trying to get to the hell portal, one that Reaper Alpha was still fighting despite trying to get there for almost 2 hours. Demons were still pouring out of the hell portal and the angels were beginning to lose. However, they were about to get some unexpected, yet not unwelcome, backup.

"_It seems you could use a little help."_ An unknown voice said to Reaper.

"What?" Reaper said back but got silence as an answer.

As Reaper continued fighting, he wondered who that voice was as well as what they were talking about. He would find out a few minutes later.

A rumbling was heard from the forest behind the demon army. The demons cheered as they thought they were going to receive more help, those cheers soon turned to screams of horror. The entire forest was _moving_. The trees were literally pulling themselves out of the ground and beginning to attack the demons. And leading the group of living trees was a familiar face.

"Hey James! Isn't that Bregalad?"

James looked over to the trees. "I'll be damned, it is."

Bregalad was and Ent that James had made friends with a long time ago after preventing a rather insidious logging company from cutting down an entire forest of magical trees. In return for saving the forest he was guarding, Bregalad agreed to assist James whenever he needed help. However, much like Draco, and a couple other creatures they knew, they inexplicably disappeared a few years before Havana died.

From the north, Owl heard rapidly approaching howling. The demons turned to the north, hopeful expressions on their faces, surely this was some gift from Lord Lucifer to help them. Their hopes were rather quickly dashed as out of the north came several varieties of wolves led by a very odd group. The leaders were a white humanoid wolf, four wolves made of ice, a sabretooth tiger, a regular tiger, and a lynx made up of white light. As the wolves collided with the now screaming demons, some of which were trying to flee back into the portal, the four leaders broke away from the pack and made their way over to Reaper Alpha.

The four ice wolves practically bowled Owl over with their enthusiasm, licking her face and snuggling up against her.

"Alright, alright, it's nice to see you guys too." Owl said.

The ice wolves were actually shadow constructs that Owl had made some years ago to help them hunt down a necromancer. They, much like Gythin, had somehow become actual living things sometime between their creation and when they found the necromancer.

The tiger, whom was currently wrapped around Cypress's leg purring like mad, was Ivy. Cypress had saved her from a poacher when she was a cub and she decided to keep her as a pet. Due to her constant exposure to leaking shadow energy, Ivy could be summoned at will, was immortal, and excelled in combat.

"Where did you run off too, Fang? You didn't get sucked through another time gate, did you?" Snake asked the sabretooth tiger sitting at his feet.

Fang was the result of a time gate. Time gates are caused by errors within the Time Continuum that the Creator overlooked. They can be caused by something as simple as a rock not shifting like it was supposed it or as large as an invasion force assembling faster than it was planned to. Time gates, as the name implies, are doorways through the time line, linking one end of the timeline to another. Since Snake's proficiency is time, whenever time gates appear, he is sent to close them up so that people, or animals in this case, don't go wandering through them. The gate Fang wandered through was up in the northern part of Russia, near the Siberian border. Fang had wandered through the portal and was living in the area when Snake showed up to close the portal. Unfortunately, Fang didn't show himself until Snake had completely closed the portal, leaving no way to send him back. Snake decided to take it upon himself to take care of Fang much to Reaper Command's displeasure. However, the only other option was to euthanize Fang if Snake refused to take care of him, so they really didn't have a choice. Much like Ivy, Fang could be summoned at will, was immortal, and excelled in combat.

The white humanoid wolf walked over to Raven and kneeled before her. "I have returned mistress."

"So, you have." Raven said with a smile. "Stop acting so formal, Ruby, you know I hate that."

Ruby the Werewolf was one of the more violent cases that Reaper Alpha had to deal with. She and her pack had been terrorizing a city in Alaska for months before Reaper and his squad were called in. Of the pack, she put up the biggest fight, taking hits from their scythes and being able to withstand being thrown around like a ragdoll. When they finally got her down she made a plea deal with Raven, in return for her life, she would swear her undying loyalty to Raven, and she accepted.

"Aww. Did I miss the fun already?" A voice said from behind them.

Coming out of his shadow portal, Reaper saw a tall, curvaceous woman with a penchant for black and red. She had large black bat wings, fangs and burning red eyes, marking her as a vampire.

"Lilith, what were you doing in the Shadow Realm?" Reaper asked.

"I go where I please." She responded as she draped herself over Crow's shoulders. "You didn't answer my question, and where is that overgrown lizard?"

"The fun hasn't even gotten started yet." Crow responded with a smile. "As for your other question…"

A loud roar was heard in the distance and all fighting on the battlefield stopped as everybody slowly looked up. Reaper couldn't hide his grin if he tried. There, cresting the mountaintops to the south was a 160-foot-long black dragon with a 100-foot wingspan. The dragon let out another earthshattering roar.

"DRACO!" Reaper shouted as the dragon descended toward the two armies.

With the shock of seeing a dragon finally wearing off, the demons and angels resumed the fight, although most of the demons were beginning to flee back into hell.

"Now the fun has started." Crow said to Lilith as Reaper Alpha began their charge to the portal once more.

"Excellent." She replied.

With the added armament of a black dragon, a werewolf, a vampire, an army of Ents, four ice wolves, two varieties of tiger, and a lynx, the group quickly made their way to the hell portal. One blast of ice and four swipes from Draco's claws later and the portal was destroyed.

"Now then," Reaper said, setting his sights on Lucifer. "On to target two."

…

Lucifer was getting annoyed. This battle should have concluded 3 hours ago with him claiming victory and reducing that human city to nothing more than ash. Instead, he had an army of mutts and sentient firewood to deal with as well as an overgrown lizard and a slut with a lust for blood. Lucifer grunted as he blocked another blast of divine energy. And getting slammed on all sides by the Creator wasn't helping!

Ichigo's jaw was on the floor. It was bad enough when the trees came to life, but now there was a dragon of all things?! Even in the books that they had retrieved from the temples they found contained nothing about this! Ikuno just checked! Where the hell were these things coming from?!

Now that the portal was dealt with Reaper and his squad made their way to where the Creator and Lucifer were fighting. Lucifer turned around and growled when he saw that the hell portal had been destroyed.

"_You think you can best me?!"_ Lucifer roared.

His response was a shadow wave to the face, followed by a blast of divine energy. With Reaper Alpha on his side, the Creator began to beat back Lucifer. The angels, Ents and wolves were beginning to mop up the last of the demons as Lucifer began to take some serious damage. Suddenly Lucifer began to laugh.

"What are you laughing for?" Reaper growled.

"_Oh nothing. Just imaging your face if you found your precious family suddenly missing."_ Lucifer said still laughing.

Reaper growled and fired wave after wave of shadow at Lucifer. His eyes slowly beginning to turn black.

"ToUcH. ThEm. AnD. YoUr. ImMoRtAl. LiFe. Is. **FORFEIT**!" Reaper said, punctuating each word with another shadow wave.

"Reaper, you need to calm down." Havana said, seeing the telltale signs of Reaper starting to become Consumed.

Lucifer just laughed again as if Reaper's threat was no more than a funny joke. _"Hilarious! You, killing me? Hysterical!" _Lucifer looked around once more. _"It appears I've been bested. Farewell then, Reaper. We will see each other soon."_

And with that ominous statement hanging in the air, Lucifer vanished.

Reaper growled as the black faded from his eyes. Around him, the shadow army which had been forming due to his anger faded back into the shadows and the shadow portal closed. The angels slaughtered the last of the demons as all the Ents, aside from Bregalad, when back into the forest and became still once more. The wolf packs howled one more time before trotting off back to the north.

"_Thank you for your help." _The Creator said.

"Of course, Creator." Owl said, and the entire squad bowed.

"_You had best head back to your friend, Ichigo. After watching that performance, she no doubt has many questions."_

"Right, right." Reaper said, the Creator nodded at him once before vanishing.

As they headed back to Gran Crevasse, Reaper's thoughts swirled around Lucifer's statement. He tightly hugged Havana close to him. She lightly patted his back.

"It's alright Reaper, I'm not going anywhere." She said.

…

**Location: Far side of the universe**

Thousands of light years from Earth lies a planet in ruin. The once thriving vegetation, reduced to nothing more than dust, once proud cities lie in crumbling ruin, the surface of the planet was pockmarked with craters and gouges. The original inhabitants of this world were long gone but their creations remained. It was here that Jonasan and Lady Luck landed.

"Liz is here? On this inhospitable rock? There's barely an atmosphere left anymore." Jonasan commented.

One of the benefits of the immortality that the Chosen enjoy is that they don't need oxygen to breath. The Chosen, much like Death's Riders, can only die in one way, and that's combat. Otherwise, any other forms of death don't affect them, hence why Jonasan was still alive and not struggling to breath in the deoxygenated atmosphere the planet currently had.

"_I am positive she's here." _Luck said. _"This was her last assignment from Death that she took after Kurisu disappeared."_

"I wonder why he sent her here?"

"_Why don't we find out? Someone is engaged in quite the fight to the east."_

Jonasan lightly sprinted to the east while Luck followed him. As the fighting got louder, the terrain got rougher, with patches of ice, more gouges and whole chunks missing from the ground all working to trip up the unwary. Jonasan was having to do some fairly fancy acrobatics in order to keep his speed while Luck simply flew over the obstacles. For a measure, Jonasan was traveling at approximately 30 miles an hour.

"_You continue to impress me, Jonasan."_ Luck said as she watched him do a particularly difficult series of acrobatics to get over a group of large craters.

"I try." Jonasan said as he hit solid ground again. "Thank the Creator for that athletics training on Uthomia. I would have never been able to get through this otherwise."

"_I could have carried you."_ Luck said.

"Luck," Jonasan sighed. "I'm supposed to serve you, not the other way around."

"_I wouldn't have minded." _Luck insisted.

"Another time, perhaps."

"_I'll hold you to that."_

"I'm sure you will." Jonasan said as they crested a hill.

Down at the base of the hill, Jonasan found Liz fighting a group of one-eyed white humanoid…_things_. They let out inhuman screeches and slashed at her with their sword-like hands, they looked like genetic modification experiments gone horribly wrong. Liz was cutting them down left and right with her signature glaive, but they were getting back up just as fast as she was cutting them down. Jonasan then noticed 4 of these white things attempting to sneak up behind Liz.

"Umm, no." Jonasan said and darted down the hill.

Jonasan drew the two daggers at his waist and held them in a reverse grip. The daggers were made up of a type of crystal compound which made them on par with Cosminium with the added bonus of allowing Jonasan to channel luck or misfortune into the blades. Jonasan quickly ran up behind the four and sliced their heads off, when they started regenerating their heads, Jonasan powered his daggers with misfortune and slashed at them again and backed away. Jonasan lifted a hand and four tendrils of purple energy connect the white things to Jonasan's raised hand.

"Looks like you just ran out of luck." Jonasan said, and he snapped his fingers.

The earth rumbled. Cracks began to appear across the battlefield throwing the white things off balance. Jonasan found himself being picked up by Luck as the cracks began to turn into gaping chasms, causing the white things to fall in. The cracks soon filled with magma and Jonasan highly doubted anything that fell in was alive after that.

Luck set them down on top of the hill that they descended and surveyed the damage. The battlefield had turned into a field of magma and floating rocks.

Jonasan scratched the back of his head and looked sheepishly at Luck. "I think I over did it a bit."

"_A little bit, yes."_ Luck said.

The two looked down at the magma field. "I sure hope Liz isn't still down there." Jonasan said, worried.

His question was answered a moment later when the woman in question landed beside him.

Liz was a woman who looked to be about 26 years old although the blond man knew her to be much older. She was 5'5'' with medium length brunette hair. She had an average build although it did not detract from her womanly charms. She currently had red eyes, but the blond man knew them to be sky blue at one point.

Liz was staring at Jonasan in shock.

"yoo-hoo, Liz?" Jonasan said waving a hand in front of her face. "You in there? Your eyes aren't lying to you, you know."

This seemed to break Liz out of her stupor and she immediately rounded on Luck, her eyes narrowed.

"Luck are you responsible for this?" Liz said gesturing to Jonasan.

"Umm. You know I'm right here you know." Jonasan said.

Liz glanced at him. "You hush. You're not supposed to look that young so she as some explanation to do."

"I'm not sure whether to take that as a complement or an insult." Jonasan muttered. "And hello to you too."

"Jonasan, I will greet you properly once I get my answer." Liz said. "Luck, explanation, now."

"_I thought the answer was obvious."_ Luck said as she walked over to Jonasan, changing to Misfortune along the way. Misfortune ran a hand along Jonasan's jaw line and shot him a seductive look which caused Jonasan to blush before smirking at Liz. _"He is mine."_ Madam Misfortune purred.

Jonasan had been reduced to a blushing mess at this point. "Madam, I told you not to do that."

"_But your so adorable when you're flustered." _Misfortune said.

Liz quickly walked over and shooed Misfortune off Jonasan.

"_How rude."_ Misfortune said.

"You keep your corrupting hands off of him." Liz said.

"_Far to late for that dearie."_

Liz decided to ignore Misfortune for the moment and placed her hands on Jonasan's shoulders.

"Jonasan." She said, her red eyes staring into his ocean blue ones. "How long have you been with her?"

Jonasan thought for a moment. "3? 3 years give or take after you guys joined Death, without telling me might I add."

Liz sighed and looked away. "We didn't tell you for good reason." She muttered.

"Did you expect me to never find out?" Jonasan said. "Surely you guys realized with how much I traveled that someone would tell me that you two were serving Death."

"We were hoping that you would never find out." Liz said.

"Why?"

"It was necessary."

"_Was it?"_ Misfortune asked. _"What is the worst Death could have done, hmm? He wouldn't kill him, Kurisu would have gone on a rampage if that had happened. Same if he had wiped his memories of the two of you, so what harm would it have done?"_

"I…Well…" Liz tried to come up with an answer.

"_But instead of telling and saving him the worry, you left him in the dark. I watched Jonasan for years before I took him as my Chosen and every time you left on a mission, he worried about the two of you to the point of making himself ill. Every. Single. Time. He was fortunate enough to still be in elvish lands whenever you went out on missions, so he had them to take care of him. It wasn't until he had been my Chosen for a year and you two went on that mission to slay Nazzaroth that I finally told him what you two refused to tell him." _

"_Do you realize what that did to him? To find out that the one person that he had been the sole confident to for years, the one you told every secret to, the one you went on and on to about Kurisu long before you realized that he was related to him, didn't trust him enough to tell him that she and his brother were working for Death. I'll tell you what it did, it destroyed his self-confidence, to the point that he was ashamed to even look in the mirror. I spent years, even after Kurisu disappeared, repairing the damage you two did. You could at least give a better excuse as to why you didn't tell him other than 'it was for your own good'"_

"You want the answer? Death told us not to." Liz said with a sigh. "When we agreed to be his servants he made us swear not to tell you we were working for him. He had his reasons I'm sure, but we weren't about to question them."

"Liz," Jonasan said placing a hand on her shoulder. "I forgave you guys long ago for keeping that from me. I simply wished to know the reason why."

"Thank you, Jonasan." Liz said with a smile and she gave Jonasan a hug. "It's good to see you after so long, what have you spent the last 4 millennia doing?"

"Looking for Kurisu." Jonasan said.

"'looking for Kurisu?' What do you mean? Kurisu is dead, you were at his funeral, I remember seeing you there."

"_Kurisu is not dead, Elizabeth." _Misfortune said.

"What?" Liz said in shock. "How? How is he not dead, not even Death could find him."

Jonasan held out a hand and a dense ball of swirling green particles appeared.

"What is that?" Liz asked staring at the ball.

"This is what I call Essence, its yours to be exact." Jonasan said.

"And what is this Essence and what does it have to do with Kurisu being alive?"

"I'm getting there." Jonasan reassured. "Essence is an individual's luck stores, or lifetime luck. Each person has a set amount of luck that gets used in their life. Essence is spent naturally over the course of a lifetime and the size depends on how long a person is slated to live." Jonasan gestured to Liz's Essence. "Your Essence is very dense due to your indeterminate lifespan." Jonasan brought up another ball of Essence, this one was more dense that hers. "And this is Kurisu's Essence, Essence disappears when a person dies, so this is how I know that Kurisu is still alive. See how it's in a compressed state, it means he is in a type of stasis."

"Does this tell you where he's at?"

Jonasan sighed. "Unfortunately not, just tells me that he is still alive."

The planet suddenly trembled as the cracks in the magma field spread.

"Umm, Madam Misfortune, what's happening." Jonasan asked.

"_You unintentionally caused the planet to go critical. It's time to go."_

Misfortune flew over to Jonasan, grabbed him by the waist. _"You should get off world as well Liz." _Misfortune then proceeded to haul Jonasan up to orbit, Liz right behind them. From orbit, the three watched as the planet turned from an inhospitable rock to a ball of magma.

"…well that's one way to complete an assignment." Liz said.

"What do you plan on doing now?" Jonasan asked.

"Well…"

A wave of blue energy came rippling through the stars, slamming into the three of them. After they regained their bearing they looked at each other.

"That came from Earth didn't it?" Jonasan asked Misfortune.

"_Yes."_

"I wonder…" Jonasan said as he held up a hand and summoned Kurisu's Essence.

Jonasan's eyes widened in shock, the once compressed ball was now a large ball of Essence, Kurisu was active. Jonasan immediately began performing process of elimination to determine where he might be.

"Where, where, where, where." Jonasan muttered as he was narrowing down the options.

Liz looked over and saw the expanded state Kurisu's Essence was in and immediately knew where he would be.

"Earth." Was all Liz said before she shot off in the direction of Earth.

"Liz! Wait! Damn it, she's gone." Jonasan said and tilted his head back to look at Misfortune. "We need to head back to Earth Madam."

"_Do we have to? I won't get to spend as much time with you if we go back~"_

"Madam…" Jonasan said with a sigh.

"_Say my name, and we'll go back." _

"But Madam…"

"_My name, not Madam."_

Jonasan sighed. "Let's head home, Misfortune."

"_Now was that so hard?"_ Misfortune said as the two shot off after Liz.

* * *

*View switches and we see the author sitting in the middle of a white void tapping away at a computer*

Code 089: And there we go. Alright that's the first chapter done.

*Turns toward the reader*

Code 089: Alright, the story is set. It's time for the End War, the gods and goddesses have returned, and war has broken out between the Creator and Lucifer. Who is going to win? Only I know.

*Death and Luck appear out of nowhere*

Code 089: What the…? Umm, Hi Death and Luck. What are you doing here, how did you get here and why are you here?

Death: You opened a door and we walked through.

Luck: Besides its more interesting here than spending a week or two traveling to Earth.

Code 089: OK?

Death: Worry not mortal, we will stay out of your way.

Luck: *immediately starts previewing the next chapter* You have a spelling error here, and here, and here.

Code 089: Ack! *Corrects errors* Better?

Luck: Yes.

Code 089: Good. Anyway, as always, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to roast marshmallows. Ciao!


	2. Chapter 2: Time Anomaly

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 2: Time Anomaly

**A/N: ***checks last update date*

Good lord, it's been two months since I last updated this. I blame you eternally for this bro. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long. Also since I forgot to put this in the last chapter, disclaimer!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Darling in the FranXX or its characters, they belong to their respective owners. I also do not own Kurisu or Liz, they are owned by my brother, Kurisu Time here on fanfiction. I do, however, own Reaper Alpha, Jonasan, and the gods and goddesses, they're mine.

* * *

"So, Reaper, what are these things, if you don't mind me asking?" Ichigo said, staring at the creatures that were surrounding Reaper Alpha.

"These are associates, or pets, that we have acquired while working for Death." Reaper said.

"Yes, but what are they?" Ikuno asked still kind of in shock at seeing things previously seen only in fairytales.

"Lilith is a vampire/succubus, depending on her mood. Ruby is a werewolf, Bregalad is a Rowan Ent, Owl's ice wolves as well as Havana's light lynx, Spirit, are shadow constructs, Ivy and Fang are…" Reaper trailed off looking at Snake for an explanation.

"The best I've come up with are shadow enhanced creatures." Snake said.

"That, and Draco, of course, is an Ancient Black Dragon." Snake said.

"How do they exist though?" Miku asked. "The two tigers I can understand as well as the wolves and the lynx, but the others? Did they exist on Earth before?"

"They actually did." Reaper said. "Supernatural creatures were a byproduct of humanity's creation. Humanity was made by the Fates although their reasons for doing so were, and still are, unknown. During humanities early years, it seems that humans had some latent divine energy from the Fates, as such, when humans began to think about what may be hiding within the dark, that latent energy activated and created many of the supernatural creatures that existed in stories."

"Reaper Command was well aware of the various supernatural creatures that inhabited the world with us and made sure to keep tabs on them and track their numbers." Raven said. "The Reaper squads acted as caretakers, keeping humans away from the areas claimed by the supernatural as well as dealing with any who got out of hand. A few years before APE took over the world government, they abruptly vanished, with no trace of them to be found."

"Lilith, have the others begun to return to Earth?" Crow asked.

"The Werewolves and Vampires have yes, the Ent's never left, they just fell into a slumber. I haven't heard anything from the Elves, so it is unlikely they are coming back, and the other monstrous species are staying in their respective realms. The Kemonomimi returned the moment that the VRIM died but have gone silent recently." Lilith replied.

"What about the dragon's, Draco?" Reaper asked.

Draco rumbled in draconic for several minutes with Reaper nodding every now and then while everyone else just looked on in confusion. Once he was done, Reaper translated.

"Draco said that the elders and ancients are searching for a new home in the mountains before they allow any of the young dragons or hatchlings back."

Owl looked at Reaper in confusion. "Since when could you understand draconic, Reaper?"

Reaper sighed. "I have been able to for a while. It took a long time and a lot of laughs from Draco when I mistranslated what he said."

Hiro cast a sidelong glance at Lilith. "Are they going to be a problem for us?" Hiro asked, he had read several tales about vampires and none of them were good.

Reaper noticed the glance. "Lilith and her kind are not a threat to humans. They have other ways of getting what they need."

…

**Time skip: 3 weeks**

It had been about three weeks since the first battle of the End War. With the bulk of the demonic army driven back, the angels could now prioritize building the defense of the various human cities. The walls around Gran Crevasse had been finished about a week after the first battle. Three-foot thick walls of holy stone, a type of stone only found within the quarries of Heaven, surrounded the city, warded with the strongest blessings of protection the angels could muster.

As promised, humanity was kept out of the war. People were free to keep doing as they wished and only when people were traveling between cities did the angels get involved, acting as escorts, so groups didn't get hit by demon patrols. Otherwise, all intel flowed into and out of the fortress the angels had built and to the capitol to Ichigo's office as need be. Other than the occasional announcement from Ichigo, humanity was kept in the dark.

…

Reaper Alpha were currently setting out on a mission from Death. In a strange twist of irony, Lucifer had decided to use the remaining abandoned APE facilities as bases for his army. Reaper and his squad were headed to one such facility, courtesy of Draco. Death had discovered the base a few hours ago and, since he decided to remain neutral, was going to leave the base for the angels to find. However, Death discovered a time anomaly within the base, so he had to send in Reaper Alpha to deal with it.

The base in question was a subterranean base was about 100 miles away from Gran Crevasse and about 50 miles away from Cerasus, a city that was nestled at the base of the mountain range where the Blue Volcano, the Klaxosaur home city, was located. The base was practically out in the middle of nowhere which confused Snake as it was an extremely unlikely place for a time anomaly to form.

There were obvious signs of demonic activity in the area. Several of the trees were dead and replaced with obsidian trees and the grass was beginning to turn a blood red color. Around the entrance to the facility, the demons had erected several obsidian walls and watchtowers to defend the area, although it wouldn't help them much. Draco landed about 3 miles away from the facility, just outside the sight range of a demon and allowed Reaper Alpha to get off. He would fly high above the base until Reaper called him to return. After a quick survey of the area, Reaper gave his orders.

"Raven and Crow use your Deadshots to take out the guards in the tower. The rest of us will shadow walk through the wall and deal with the demons on the inside of the walls. Go." Reaper said.

The group silently advanced toward the gate. When they were 500 yards out Raven and Crow split off from the main group and, from behind nearby cover, began to silently take out the demons standing on the watchtowers. The others approached the walls and quickly phased through and dealt with the guards inside the walls. Once Crow and Raven rejoined the group, they systematically eliminated the demons outside the facility. Opening the door to the underground part of the facility, Reaper quickly realized that the base would be too large for them to root out as a group, so Reaper split them up into their usual pairs and they went hunting through the facility, both to eliminate the demonic presence from the area and to find the time anomaly within.

The base was several miles of long hallways and endless rooms which made it easy for the demons to hide from Reaper Alpha, the result was that it took several hours to clear out the base but thankfully most of the demons were the imp type. It took a while, but eventually Reaper and Havana found the warlord that was commanding the demons within the base. After a few close calls with the big brute, he was dealt with, it was during this fight that Snake ran across the time anomaly.

…

**POV Change: Snake**

Cypress and I were doing another sweep through the center of the facility when Chronos began to lightly hum. As this only happened when there were time anomalies nearby, this meant that it was close. As we passed another hallway I felt Chronos lightly tug me in that direction.

"Cypress turn here." I said.

"Why?" She replied.

"Chronos has picked up on the time anomaly. Its somewhere down this hallway."

Cypress and I started to walk down the hallway. When we reached another intersection, I felt Chronos tug me to the left, so we went that way. This happened for several minutes until we stopped outside a room about halfway down the 10th hallway we went down.

Opening the door to the room, we saw that it was filled with a variety of magma energy scanners and several banks of monitors. And there, in the center of the room, floating at about head height, was a crack that was emitting a blindingly bright white light. The crack was about six inches long and 2 inches wide and was pulsating so the light it was expelling grew and dimmed.

"This isn't a standard time gate anomaly." I said with a frown. "This is a full-blown rift."

There are two forms of time anomalies. The first is a Time Gate, like the one that Fang wandered through. The second, and more dangerous, time anomaly is a Temporal Rift. Temporal Rifts were tears within the temporal continuity with one end anchored in reality and the other within the time continuum itself. The continuum is made up of the infinite timelines that make up reality and the universe itself and thus matter cannot exist within it. What makes Temporal Rifts so dangerous is that they absorb whatever, or whoever, is in the space around them, and since matter cannot exist within the continuum, whatever comes into contact with the continuum is converted into energy since the continuum exists in a pure energy state. Quite a painful way to go for a human or any other animal.

"This Rift has been around for quite some time." I muttered examining the rift. "Several millennia at least. It's a wonder that this entire area hasn't become Fragmented.

Temporal Rifts can cause irreparable damage to an area. If left unchecked, they create more and more Temporal Rifts until the area is nothing more than a maze of Temporal Rifts and the temporal continuity within the area begins to collapse and the area becomes a Fragmented. While not as destructive as, say, a spacequake, Fragmented areas are hostile to anything that enters them as the object or person is literally _removed_ _from existence_. Fragmented areas require divine intervention to repair but even then, the area is never 100% back to normal. Chernobyl being one such example.

"I'll call this in to Reaper, but we need to make sure the area is completely clear of demons first before I try this. This thing is going to fight me tooth and nail, I'm sure of it." I said, bringing up my communicator.

"Snake to Reaper."

Reaper appeared on the screen just as he finished swinging Harvester. "Not the best time Snake." Reaper said, annoyed.

"Sorry Reaper." I apologized. "I wish to inform you that I found the anomaly that master mentioned. It's a Rift."

"A Rift? Shit, no wonder APE set up shop here, they were probably trying to study it. How old is it? Can you tell?" He replied.

"Several millennia. Perhaps even older."

"Several millennia!? Is the- Woah!"

Reaper had to dodge out of the way as the warlord took a swing at him and he swung Harvester at him in retaliation and finally managed to kill him.

"Asshole. Anyway, is the area Fragmented at all?" Reaper asked.

"Negative, which is odd considering it's age."

"Alright, send your coordinates and stay there while we finish moping up the last of the demons. We'll be there soon."

"Coordinates sent. Snake out."

I turned toward Cypress. "Reaper and the others will clean up the last of the demons then make their way here. Any idea as to what they were trying to do with this?"

"Still working that one out." She replied looking over the equipment.

…

**POV Change: Third Person**

When Reaper and the others entered the room where the Rift was located, they saw Cypress examining the equipment that was surrounding the Rift while Snake was frowning at the Rift itself.

"Cypress, Snake, sitrep." Crow said.

"All the equipment down here was designed to analyze the Rift. Each one of these scanners feed in to several supercomputers that are doing some kind of complex analysis. While I don't understand all of it, the gist of it is that APE was studying the Rift to see if it could be used as a gateway. Whether that was to go back in time or across it I don't know." Cypress said.

"Knowing them, probably both." Owl snarked.

"Snake?" Reaper asked.

Snake turned toward Reaper and shook his head. "This isn't going to be an easy close, no matter what I try. Due to the age of the Rift, it is going to fight tooth and nail to stay open. Also, as with most things, with age comes strength. This is going to be one hell of a fight to close."

"Are you going to be able to close it?" Havana asked, concerned, they had seen Snake close Rifts before but never one this big, and even the small ones that he closed left him utterly exhausted.

Snake smiled at her." I can do this Havana, don't you worry."

"Let's get this started then." Reaper said as he and the others casted a shadow dome about the area.

Rifts were notorious for large energy surges as they were being closed and that energy can be harmful. The shadow dome was constructed so that, as the Rift began to release energy, it would harmlessly disperse against the dome and not run rampantly around the room and start to overload things. With a nod from Reaper, Snake turned toward the Rift and began to attempt to close it.

…

**POV Change: ? **

**Inside the Rift.**

How long have I been in here? A Millenia? 2? It's hard to tell. I've watched civilization grow and change over the years and it's always been in the positive direction, until APE showed up. APE. The very word made me growl. In every timeline that I have viewed, they have always managed to fuck it up and it ended in the annihilation of humanity, except for this one.

The appearance of Reaper Alpha drastically altered the timeline in ways that not even I couldn't figure out. I watched as the Fates threw challenge after challenge at them and saw them conquer them all. I am glad that, with the introduction of Reaper Alpha, Zero Two got the happy ending she wanted. It was saddening to see her try and try only to fail in succeeding to achieve her happiness. Seeing her get the life she wanted, it made me happy, but it also reminded me of Liz and Jonasan.

Jonasan, my poor brother. The news of my disappearance must have shocked the man. He disappeared a few short months after I did, and I was never able to find him, no matter what timeline I searched in. He's long dead by now, no doubt. He wasn't immortal like me and Liz and I wish that I could have told him who we worked for, it was the only secret we kept from him.

Liz, my beloved wife. The news of my disappearance broke her. I was forced to watch as the woman I loved slowly became consumed by the fires of rage. Her beautiful sky-blue eyes which I so loved changed to burning crimson orbs of hatred. I sat and watched as Liz asked for a mission in which she could lose herself in her rage and saw Death give her the mission to eliminate a planet of regenerators, beings who defied Death by being unable to die by normal means. I watched as Death sent her off without telling her how to kill them, even though he knew.

I did not hate Death. I knew he did what he did for a reason. Sending Liz of to kill the regenerators was so that she could kill to her hearts content over my disappearance. The only thing I did not understand was why he refused to let us tell Jonasan who we worked for and what we did. I hated having to lie to him every time we went out on a mission, saying that we were going away for a trip and wouldn't be back for a while. I hated the look of utter betrayal on his face whenever he saw the scars that Liz and I came back with. And I absolutely hated the way he worried about us while we were gone. He would send us letters every two weeks if we were going away for months at a time. Giving us updates on what was going on at home and with him. Never once outright saying that he was worried but managing to express it with every word. It was like he was writing the letters to us to reassure himself that-

I felt a tug at my back. Ignoring it, I continued to observe the various timelines around me, trying to figure out Lucifer's endgame, not that I could do anything about it being stuck here and all. I could watch the timelines shift and change all I wanted but I couldn't do a damn thing to change them.

The tug turned into a vacuum, the sensation feeling like the same one that brought me to this strange plane. I watched as the timelines faded from view and I was consumed by darkness, but then a light slowly began to grow in my vision. A way out perhaps? As the light began to grow I got a blinder of a headache as a felt something about me shift. As the light engulfed me, the last thought I had before passing out was that perhaps I was finally free.

…

**POV Change: Third person**

**Former Demon Base**

"Come on, you son of a bitch." Snake growled. "Close!"

Snake was drenched in sweat from the effort of closing the Rift. Raw energy was flying about the room as the Rift glowed brightly causing Reaper Alpha's cloaks to be blown back behind them. Like Snake guessed, the Rift was fighting to remain open.

"Almost…Got it…" Snake said.

After another few minutes of struggling with the Rift, Snake let out a triumphant yell.

"Got it!"

The Rift let out a bright flash of light, temporarily blinding everyone. A thump was heard not a second later as something hit the floor. When Reaper Alpha could see again, what they saw shocked them. There was a man lying unconscious on the floor who was not there before. Havana hesitantly checked for a pulse.

"He's got a pulse." She said.

"H-H-How…?" Snake stuttered.

Someone had, somehow, gotten sucked inside a Rift, and _survived_. It was physically impossible! The pure energy state that the fabric of time existed in should have ripped his body to shreds! Yet, here he was, whole, on the floor of the facility, unharmed.

The man was about 5'7'' and had short black hair. He was wearing a tattered, deep blue cloak with clock patterns on it. The man looked to be about 28 and had a black yang symbol on a necklace. The necklace was hovering just above the man's chest and had a gold corona around it before the glow died and the necklace settled.

"Uhh, Reaper?" Raven asked.

"Take him back with us. We can't leave him here to be found by the demons. Hopefully, when he wakes, he will be able to tell us how he got inside a Rift, how he survived, and what that glowing necklace was about." Reaper said.

"Does he look familiar to anyone else?" Havana asked examining him.

"Very faintly." Crow replied. "But I don't know where from."

…

**Gran Crevasse**

**Medical Ward**

**Time Skip: 1 week**

It had been a week since Reaper Alpha returned from their mission to the demon base where they found the man who came out of the Rift. Upon their return to Gran Crevasse, Havana immediately admitted him to her hospital to do a through examination of him. The man lacked any identification, so she was unable to look him up in their systems but, after she checked him, aside from being in a coma, the man was perfectly healthy. Snake hypothesized that, since he was in the Rift and somehow survived, his body had not taken well to shifting from a pure energy environment to a physical one, and that had thrown his body into shock.

Havana had come in to check on him again and was checking his pulse when the man woke up, violently. His eyes snapped open has his arm shot up and grabbed Havana by the throat, lifting her off the ground. The man's eyes were pitch black as he stared at Havana as she tried to take his hands off her throat. Reaper, who had sensed Havana's panic, shadow walked to her and kicked the man in the sternum causing him to release Havana as he went flying across the room.

Reaper caught Havana as she began to cough and massage her throat.

"Are you alright?" Reaper asked, concerned.

"I'm alright." She rasped. "Just caught me by surprise."

Reaper gently put her on the ground. He then summoned Harvester as he turned toward the man who had attacked his wife. As he stalked toward him, the black in the man's eyes began to clear as he clutched his head.

"By the Creator, my head! I feel like Jonasan set off a firecracker near my ear again." The man said, shaking his head.

"You have 30 seconds to explain why you attacked my wife before I cut your head off." Reaper said.

This caused the man to look up and see Reaper standing between himself and Havana with Harvester drawn.

"What the hell are you talking about?" The man asked.

"You have been asleep for the past week since we found you and the moment you wake up, you attacked my wife. WHY?" Reaper demanded.

"Oh." The man said as he stood up, he then bowed low to the two. "It was an involuntary reflex, I've had a few too many unpleasant awakenings so it's become a habit. My apologies."

While Reaper relaxed his stance, he still kept himself between the man and Havana as a precaution. Them man straightened up and looked at Havana with concern as she was still rubbing her throat.

"Are you alright miss?" The man asked.

"I'm fine." Havana said as she stood up.

"Who are you?" Reaper asked.

The man blinked at him. "Kurisu, Death's first rider." The man said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Reaper tensed and brought Harvester to the ready again.

"You lie. The first rider died over 4 millennia ago. I will not ask again, who are you?"

The man looked confused and started muttering to himself. "I was in that thing for 4 millennia? The timelines must have really messed with my sense of time if it's been _that_ long."

Reaper, who had had enough of this, decided to call Death himself to settle the matter. If the man was indeed the first rider like he claimed, then Death should easily be able to verify it. If he wasn't, then Death could interrogate the man himself as he was far past his allotted expiration date.

The man was still muttering to himself when Death appeared within the room. As Death gazed upon the man, Reaper felt a sense of… _confusion_ from his master.

"_Kurisu, what are you doing here?"_ Death said, jerking Kurisu out of his musings.

"Lord Death?" Kurisu asked confused.

"_Yes." _Death floated around Kurisu as he examined him. _"You did not turn up at the Castle of Judgement as you should have when you died. Yet, you turn up here several millennia later, alive and well and far stronger than you should be. Explain."_

Umm, I'm not sure how I got here but…" Kurisu started to explain before he was cut off.

"He was inside the time anomaly." Reaper interrupted. "The anomaly turned out to be a Temporal Rift and when Snake closed it, he popped out."

"_Hmm. That shouldn't be possible, the Creator is going to want to know about this. Reaper, prepare a room for a meeting and assemble your squad. I want to know every detail about your latest mission."_ Death said.

"Yes, Master." Reaper said as Death disappeared from the room.

Havana muttered something in Reaper's ear and he nodded. He then looked back toward Kurisu.

"My wife, Havana," He gestured toward her. "wishes to do an examination of you since you are awake to make sure she didn't miss anything during her initial one. Threaten or otherwise harm her again, and first Rider or not, I will kill you. Understand?"

Yeah, yeah, yeah." Kurisu said as he sat back down on the bed he awoke on.

…

**Earth Orbit**

From outside Earth's gravity well, three figures were rapidly approaching, one was cloaked in a ball of red, and the other two were cloaked in a ball of white. As the figures came to a stop it was revealed that they were Liz, Jonasan and Lady Luck.

Jeez, Earth has changed in the millennia's that I have been gone." Liz said.

When Jonasan said nothing, she looked at him and, to her shock, saw that his right eye had turned an electric blue.

_Scanning. 74.08% Nitrogen, 24.96% Oxygen, 0.87% Argon, 0.10% Carbon dioxide. Atmospheric conditions approaching Pre-Magma levels._ The voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

After the voice finished speaking, Jonasan's eye turned back to its original sea blue color.

"Jonasan, what the hell, or who the hell, was that?" Liz asked carefully.

"Who that?" Jonasan asked. "That was Jade, she is an AI that I bought from another human world several decades ago."

_Hello_

"An AI." Liz said slowly.

"Yes." Jonasan replied.

"And where is she, exactly?"

Jonasan pulled his collar down a bit and Liz saw that there was a small metal disk implanted at the base of Jonasan's neck.

"She is implanted in your head?!" Liz asked in shock.

_Yes. Do not be concerned, Liz. I am causing Jonasan no harm by being here._

"She comes with nanobots too." Jonasan said helpfully as he held out his hand.

A thin line of metal extended from Jonasan's neck, down his arm and into the center of his outstretched hand. Liz watched in fascination as a small disk was made in his hand, seemingly out of nothing. When the disk was finished it activated and a figure appeared above it. This figure was Jade.

(**A/N: **Think of Cortana from Halo 4 but with longer hair that extends down to her upper back and is green in color instead of blue.)

Jade bowed to Liz. _Hello Liz. I am Jade, AI companion and personal assistant to Jonasan. It is nice to finally meet you._

"Umm, hello." Liz replied, she wasn't to sure what to make of this situation.

"_Hello again, Jade. I hope you are doing well."_ Luck said in greeting to Jade.

_I am Lady Luck. You haven't been attempting to seduce my master while I was updating, were you?_

"Jade!" Jonasan whined while turning red in the face.

"_That is none of your business, Jade."_ Luck said hotly.

_Hmm. We'll see about that._

And with those parting words, the nanobots destroyed the disk and retreated into the disk at his neck.

"That was very disturbing Jonasan, I hope you realize that." Liz said.

Jonasan shrugged. "Hey, she has been worth every cent I paid for her, so I don't really care."

A flash of pink coming from the other side of the earth then caught their attention. The pink flash was soon followed by a green one.

"What was that?" Liz asked.

"_Hmm. It appears Love and Life are going at it, although the odds are heavily skewed in Love's favor for that particular matchup." _

"Why are Life and Love fighting? What happened while I was gone?" Liz asked.

"_Ah that's right, I forgot to tell you two."_ Luck looked dead at Liz. _"The Apocalypse Seal has been broken."_

Liz's eyes widened in horror. "The End War." She whispered.

Jonasan grimaced. "That's not good. My Lady, where do you stand?"

With the End War going on, he would have to side with whomever Luck and Misfortune decided to go with. While he was almost positive Luck would have sided with the Creator, Misfortune was always a wildcard. Liz would, undoubtably, side with the Creator, if Misfortune pledged them to Lucifer…

Luck sighed. _"Jonasan, drop the formality, at least when we are among friends. I've known you for over four millennia, such formality isn't necessary unless other gods are in earshot. And to answer your question, I decided not to pick a side, so you are free to choose as you wish. The same goes to you Liz as Death decided to do the same thing."_

Jonasan let out a sigh of relief. He really didn't want to fight the Creator or the Riders if he didn't have to. However, there was one more important question to ask.

"Where do everybody's loyalties lie?" Liz asked.

"_Will, Knowledge, Emotion, Love, Humanity, and the Riders sided with the Creator while the Elementals and Life sided with Lucifer. Death and I are unofficially sided with the Creator."_

"Riders? I suppose that makes sense, with Kurisu gone and myself occupied, master would need others to fill in our positions." Liz mumbled.

"Life sided with Lucifer? What is she playing at?" Jonasan wondered.

"Nothing good I imagine." Liz growled. "But we can discuss that later. Where is Kurisu?"

_Standby._

Jade hacked a nearby Reaper Command satellite and fed the system an image of Kurisu to find him. She quickly got a hit from when he passed by a camera at a place called Gran Crevasse.

_He is someplace called Gran Crevasse. It is a large city in the center of the Eurasian continent._

"_Ah, I know where that is. Come along." _Luck said as she descended toward the earth, Liz right behind her.

…

The trio landed in the center of the city, near an absurdly large Sakura tree. Looking around, the way the city was designed vaguely reminded Jonasan of how some of the larger cities in America used to look when it was still a thing. Fortunately, there was no one in the park at the time of their landing so there were no screaming mortals, to Jonasan's relief.

"Jade?" Jonasan prompted.

_He's in the large building with the gold dome to your east. It appears to be some type of government building._

"Race you there?" Liz asked with a smile, knowing that Jonasan never turned down a challenge.

"Sure, but be warned, I've gotten a lot better over the last few millennia." Jonasan said.

"I'd be disappointed if you hadn't." Liz replied.

"_Well this ought to be interesting." _Luck said. _"On three. One…Two…Three!"_

The pair took off like a bullet with Liz leading initially but Jonasan soon overtook her and left her in the dust. Luck chuckled at the display before flying toward the building in question, her Chosen wasn't even trying.

…

"How?!" Liz asked in shock as she was leaning up against the building attempting to catch her breath while Jonasan was barely breathing quicker.

"Simple, training." Jonasan said with a smirk.

"Bullshit. Were you running all out?"

"Nope. To be honest I wasn't really trying."

"What?! Just how fast can you go?!" Liz asked, aghast.

Jonasan shrugged. "I'm not totally sure."

"_Did we have fun?"_ Luck asked as she descended.

There were people all around them, yet no one seemed to bat an eye at the fact Luck could fly on her own or the fact that the two of them were dressed very oddly. They didn't even get a single double take. Liz had finally recovered her breath and the three of them entered the building. As they did so, Liz just had to ask.

"Luck, just how common are godly appearances and other such things around here?"

"_Quite common. It's not unusual to see an angel or a god or goddess pop in and out of this building."_ Luck replied, as they began to walk down a random hallway.

"Surprising, and Jonasan, do you know where you're going?"

"Yup." Jonasan replied while tapping his ear. "I have sensitive hearing, which is both a blessing and a curse let me tell you, as such I can hear him having a conversation with Death, the Creator and a couple other's down this way."

As they continued down the hallway, Liz could hear Kurisu and the Creator talking, confirming Jonasan's statement.

"_Now then, Kurisu, mind explaining just what happened to you?" _The Creator asked.

"Well…"

The trio had reached the door and discovered it to be locked. Fed up with things getting in the way of getting her rightful explanation from her husband, Liz placed a hand on the door and Flash Froze the door and the surrounding wall. This caused all conversation to cease on the other side of the door and Jonasan heard several weapons being drawn. Jonasan approached the door and, after wrapping his finger in purple energy, tapped the door. The tap caused the door to explode into the room, filling it with an icy mist. As the trio walked into the room Liz leveled an icy glare at Kurisu.

"You have some explaining to do." Liz said.

…

Code 089: It's getting quite crowded in here. Why are you all here again?

*Explosion goes off it the background*

Code 089: And why are Love and Life fighting here?

Knowledge: *walks out of a random door* We're here because its more interesting here than in our respective realms. So many interesting worlds. *walks through another door*

Death: *in the distance* Who are you mortal?

Emotion: What do you call this place 089-chan?

Code 089: The Nexus.

Will: Why do you call it that?

Code 089: Well it seems to be the nexus of several worlds, hence The Nexus.

Will: Alright then.

*Explosion occurs*

Code 089: Why are those two fighting here of all places?

Luck: The outcome of their fight was undetermined in the chapter, so they moved it here.

Code 089: If they aren't careful they are going to destroy-

*Explosion*

*burning paper starts raining down*

Code 089: *sighs* -some of my story ideas. Welp, hopefully I remember what that one was at a later date.

Misfortune: I'm sure you will. So… when am I going to get to have some fun with my Chosen?

Code 089: Might I remind you that this is a T rated fic?

Misfortune: But you can change that.

Code 089: Yes, but I'm going to need a lot of convincing to do that.

*Explosion*

Code 089: Will you guys go and break that up while I wrap this up?

Creator: Sure. Oi! You two! *The remaining gods and goddesses depart*

Code 089: Anyways, as always, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to roast marshmallows. Ciao!

* * *

Kemonomimi: describes humanoid characters that possess animal-like features.


	3. Chapter 3: Time God

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 3: Time God

**A/N**: My muse did not want to work with me on this one, my apologies for the delay between chapters. *bows* Gomenasai.

* * *

**Just before Jonasan and Liz burst into the room**

Reaper Alpha had gathered within one of the meeting rooms within the capitol. Kurisu, the man that they found within the Time Rift, was leaning against the back wall, enshrouded in shadow. They were waiting for Death and the Creator to appear so that they could find out how, and most importantly why, Kurisu was inside a Rift. Then, Death appeared within the room and looked toward Kurisu.

"_Kurisu, quit hiding."_ Death said.

"I'm terrible with new people, you know that Death." Kurisu complained.

This caused Death as well as Reaper Alpha to chuckle a bit.

"_That is irrelevant, Kurisu. The Creator will be here any minute."_

"Fine." Kurisu said as he exited the shadows.

The room was suddenly filled with bright light as a white portal with a golden framework appeared. Out of said white portal came a white and gold clothed man, the Creator. In a rare show of respect, Reaper Alpha bowed to him.

"_Creator."_ Death said.

"_Death." _He responded.

The Creator then faced Kurisu. _"Now then, Kurisu, mind explaining what happened to you."_

"Well…" Kurisu started to say before he was interrupted.

The wall behind the Creator froze, startling everyone in the room and making Reaper Alpha draw their weapons. There was a light thunk on the door before it imploded and filled the room with an icy mist. Peering through the mist, Kurisu could make out three figures, two of which looked oddly familiar. Kurisu's jaw dropped as the figures entered the room.

"You have some explaining to do." Liz said, leveling her glare at Kurisu.

…

**POV Change: Jonasan**

Perhaps I overdid it a bit. The detonating door seemed to have put everyone within the room on edge, given that they had drawn their weapons and were looking at the three of us like we were threats. Before either myself or Liz could explain what just happened, the guy with the double-bladed scythe placed his weapon at Liz's throat.

"_Umm, no."_ I thought.

I blurred across the room toward the woman who was standing next to the man with the double-bladed scythe. The fact they had matching rings meant that these two were married and thus she was important to him. I knew that this woman wouldn't be a pushover, she carried a scythe as well, but inattention was a wonderful thing at times. Drawing my right dagger, Sorrow, and quickly knocked the scythe out of the lady's hand, bound her arms to her chest with my left arm and placed the tip of Sorrow at her throat. All of this happened in about 10 seconds.

"Take your scythe away from her throat. Now." I demanded.

The man split his attention between Liz and me, unsure as to what he should do. Liz was looking at me in shock and Lady Luck was simply looking at me, although there was a hint of concern in her pink eyes. The woman I was holding hostage seemed to break from her shock and promptly stepped on my foot, causing me to jerk and allowing her to break free.

"Son of a…" I muttered, massaging my foot.

The woman then used my own distraction to retrieve her scythe and swing it at my head. This forced me to have to lean back before doing a backflip and clocking her in the jaw as I flipped. When I landed, I swept her feet out from under her, I quickly ran over to her and used one hand to restrain her arms above her head while in the other I gathered a ball of purple energy and placed it at her throat.

"Try that again, and I will cause all of your nerves to fire at the same time." I growled a hint of purple in my eyes.

The woman's friends attempted to approach me but immediately backed off as I began to leak purple miasmic energy.

"Try me." I threatened.

"_Enough."_

In my rush to eliminate the threat to Liz's life, I neglected to note who else was in the room. As evidenced by my surprise at hearing the Creator speak.

"_Rider, stand down." _The Creator said, staring at the man with the double-bladed scythe.

The Rider slowly, and very reluctantly, lowered his scythe away from Liz's neck. The Creator then turned his attention toward me.

"_Chosen of the Fortune duo, release the Rider."_

I was holding a Rider hostage? Well shit. This wasn't going to earn me any brownie points in Lord Death's book. I quickly dispelled the miasma and got off the Rider, sheathing Sorrow. I held out a hand to help the Rider up. She glowered at it for a moment before noticing that Lord Death was watching her. She then took my hand and I helped pull her up. I bowed an apology to her, knowing that I would give a proper apology as well as an explanation for my actions later, and beat a hasty retreat to Lady Luck. I knew when I was out of my element, and this was it.

…

**POV Change: Third Person**

"Jonasan," Liz said slowly. "what the fuck was that?"

"I will explain later." Jonasan said as he rubbed his temples in an effort to stave off the incoming headache, this was quickly taken over by Luck as a small spell appeared at her fingertips.

"I'll hold you to that." Liz said before turning her attention back to the reason that they showed up in the first place. "You. Explanation. Now."

"Liz…" Kurisu started to say.

"Explanation. NOW!" Liz said.

"Alright, Alright, jeez." Kurisu sighed, he then glared at Jonasan. "You have some explaining to do as well. You're supposed to be dead."

"Dicit tenebris equites." Jonasan said. (Says the dark horseman)

Kurisu raised an eyebrow. "Quid est ut volo volo?" (What's that supposed to mean?)

"Scis exacte quid est hoc, qui decipitur." (You know exactly what that means, deceiver.)

"Ego sum, nolite illudere! Ego vero nihil aliud quam est!" (I'm not a deceiver! I've spoke naught but the truth!)

"Et quid existis mentiri me de operatus est mors?" (Then why did you lie to me about working for Death?)

"Fuimus..." Kurisu started to say before he was interrupted.

"Would you stop speaking in Latin!" Owl said, annoyed, while they spoke some Latin, they were not as proficient as these two.

The two brothers glared at each other for a moment.

""Fine."" They both said.

"Colloquium hic non est super." Kurisu muttered. (This conversation is not over.)

"Constat." Jonasan replied. (Agreed)

"Anyways, what happened to me is rather simple yet hard to understand. I had killed Foudan the Defiler and was sweeping up the last of the zombies he raised when I felt an odd tugging sensation. Following the sensation, I backtracked to Foudan's study, I found that he had set up an alter and near it was an odd, small, glowing white crack. At the time I didn't realize it, but the tugging sensation was actually the rift sucking in everything around it. As I was investigating the rift, I felt something, or _someone,_ push me toward the rift. The last thing I heard before being sucked in was, 'I'm sorry but this was necessary'."

"_And your sure you killed Foudan?"_ The Creator asked.

"Positive. I felt his soul move on."

The Creator adopted a puzzled expression. _"Interesting. Please continue."_

"Going through the rift caused me to back out. When I awoke, I was floating in a place that looked like the void. As I floated there, small stars started to appear and slowly got larger. As they approached, they turned out to be coils of white light. As they got even closer, I saw that they were strings of events, and that I could manipulate them so that they uncoiled, and I could view them. As I viewed them, I realized that they were different versions of our reality; past, present, and future."

"_The Continuum."_ The Creator said. _"It shouldn't be possible that you survived in there. You said that you were able to manipulate the timelines?"_

"Correct. I explored several of the timelines and compared them to this one. Some of the timelines had extreme changes some only had minor changes. I was also able to keep up to date on what was going on in our timeline as well." Kurisu explained.

"I saw you fall apart at my disappearance and get sent off to kill the regenerators." He looked at Liz with a forlorn expression.

"And I saw you vanish off into parts unknown." Kurisu said to Jonasan with a glare. "I searched ever timeline for your ass and I still couldn't find you."

Lady Luck giggled.

"And you didn't try to escape, why?" Liz asked with an annoyed expression.

"I tried! The rift had sealed behind me and I couldn't create a new one. So, I really didn't have a choice but to follow the timelines and pray that I was able to escape one day. Although, interesting fact, this is the only timeline that humanity won. You have Reaper Alpha to thank for that."

"Us?" Raven asked.

"Correct. You see, the future is never completely set in stone and it is constantly shifting. The future never even considered your emergence from cryosleep until it happened. Your awakening caused thousands of new timelines to spawn and caused this one to solidify. The timeline we exist in I've dubbed the 'main timeline'. Its this timeline seems to be the way things are 'supposed to work' and thus all other timelines spin off from it. Your awakening caused several timelines to disappear and others to merge with this one, solidifying our future. Instead of only being able to see a few weeks into the future before everything went gray, I was able to see almost to the end, with a few variations."

"_I see. Kurisu, I would like you to test something for me. I would like you to stop time in the city."_ The Creator said.

"Ummmmm, how do I do that?" Kurisu asked, completely confused.

"_Do what you did when you manipulated the timelines." _The Creator said.

"Ok?"

Blue energy began to gather at Kurisu's fingers. At first, he tried swiping the air like he did when he moved the timelines around when he was in the rift, but it did nothing.

"Well, your doing something as that color is different from your usual magic." Jonasan said as he observed what Kurisu was doing. "Since the energy is collecting around your index, middle finger and thumb, try snapping your fingers."

Kurisu shrugged and gave it a shot.

*snap*

Kurisu's eyes widened in shock as Jonasan, who was walking toward him, stopped moving. Looking around, Kurisu's jaws dropped as he saw that everyone was frozen where they stood.

"_Very good."_

Kurisu looked toward the voice and saw that The Creator was still moving.

"_Now undo it."_

Kurisu snapped his fingers again and the world started moving again.

"What's with that expression Kurisu?" Liz asked.

"It worked." Kurisu whispered.

"It did? I but I saw nothing." Jonasan said.

"_That's because you were trapped within the time stop."_ The Creator said.

Jonasan crossed his arms and pouted. "Now how am I supposed to study this if I can't observe the affects?"

"_Kurisu."_ The Creator said.

"Yes?"

"_It seems that during your time in the rift has given you the ability to control time. As there has yet to be a god that maintains the temporal continuity, I now extend that offer to you. Kurisu Arashi, will you accept the offer to become the God of Time as well as all the duties that it entails?"_

Kurisu didn't even bother to think about it.

"Yes, Creator."

Kurisu's body glowed blue with a light golden tint. The cloak he wore shifted and the design on the back changed, the hooded skeleton on the back of his cloak shrunk and behind it appeared a golden clock. Kurisu gained a brighter golden glow as he gained the godly aura the others had, and the twin katanas that the had strapped to his back flickered before disappearing.

"_It's going to take some time and training for you to get used to your new powers. The abilities that you used with the Continuity were limited in scope, and only about a third of what you are now able to do. I would suggest that you place some limiters on yourself as Chronokinesis is very destructive and I wouldn't want you to cause any accidents. The limiters would also allow you to continue to live among mortals, if you want to that is." _The Creator said.

Kurisu looked at Liz. "Of course, I do. I would never leave my wife."

"_Kurisu."_ Lady Luck said.

"Yes?"

"_Are you aware that the End War is currently going on?"_

"Yes."

"_Then you are aware that you must choose a side as well?"_

"Yes, and my answer should be obvious. I'm siding with The Creator. Lucifer is a stuck up, overconfident prick, and Life and I have some… issues."

"_That's good to hear."_ The Creator said. _"Death, I believe that our business is concluded here."_ Death and The Creator then departed.

Kurisu looked to Liz. "Do you forgive me, my love, for leaving you alone?"

She turned away and huffed. "You're going to have to do a lot better than that."

She then faced him and pulled him into a deep kiss. "But it's a good start."

"Tsundere Onee-sama." Jonasan muttered.

Feeling pressure on his shoulders, Jonasan looked behind him and saw Madam Misfortune leaning on him while floating, allowing him to see down her dress. Jonasan quickly averted his gaze.

"_Come now, don't be like that." _She muttered in his ear.

"We are in company that would not approve Madam Misfortune." Jonasan whispered back.

"_There's no harm in looking, you are ours and we have no problem demonstrating that. Our body is yours as much as yours is ours. If they don't like it, they can fuck off for all we care."_ Misfortune said as she pressed herself into his back as her hands trailed down his chest. _"You are our Chosen and our love, and if anyone has a problem with that, we will…"_

Misfortune was then blown off Jonasan by a gust of wind and slammed into a wall.

"Get the fuck off my brother, you." Kurisu growled.

Jonasan could have sworn he heard Misfortune whine although no one else seemed to hear it.

…

**Meanwhile**

**Location: Abandoned APE Facility**

In the same room that Snake closed the rift, all was dark, but not for long. A cracking sound was heard as space buckled, and the air distorted. A small earthquake shook the area as a white crack tore itself into existence and slowly began to expand.

…

**Location: Gran Crevasse**

Alright o brother o thine, out with it. Why the hell are you still alive?" Kurisu demanded.

"_That is because of me."_ Misfortune said as she pulled herself out of the wall. _"That was very rude by the way Kurisu."_

"You became her Chosen?" Kurisu asked.

"Yup. From what Lady Luck told me, it was a few years after you were chosen by Lord Death. While you two were out on one of your missions, I decided to take a walk through Welalune when…"

"Wait a minute, Welalune? Why were you in the elvish capital? You should have still been in Falcon Haven." Liz said.

"No, no. I had accepted an offer by the elves to study in Welalune as I was acing my classes at Millennium University. This is what happens when you're too busy working to Death to keep track of me. Anyway, as I was saying, I decided to take a walk through Welalune to clear my mind. I had just reached the outskirts of Welalune when I found a rundown shrine to Madam Misfortune."

Luck then took over the explanation from there.

"_After finding the shrine, for about 3 weeks straight he showed up everyday to restore the shrine. We had been watching Jonasan for several months before you became Death's Rider and while I was already sold on him becoming our Chosen, Misfortune was not. It took him single handedly repairing a shrine to her that they elves had scorned for years to win her over. A week after he had restored the shrine, we approached him about becoming our Chosen, he immediately responded with a yes."_ Luck said.

"Well why wouldn't I? It's not often that a goddess approaches a mortal to be their Chosen, especially during that time. The system of the Chosen was just starting to come about when I was selected." Jonasan said.

"_Indeed, and I got first pick. Life was so disappointed when I chose you." _Luck then wrapped her arms around Jonasan. _"You are mine and she cannot have you."_

"Get off of him, Luck." Kurisu growled.

"_He's my Chosen, I can do what I want with him."_ Luck said, pulling Jonasan tighter to her.

"You're getting sidetracked." Liz said, while she was not happy with the situation, Luck did have a point. "When did you find out we were Riders?"

"_About 2 years after becoming my Chosen. I believe that you two were out negotiating with the dragons about territory disputes that resulted in a large loss of life. You two had been gone for about 3 weeks without word and Jonasan was barely able to sleep anymore, so I told him not to worry since you were both Death's riders. The look on his face was priceless."_

"Not fair." Jonasan pouted. "Anyway, if you want to know how I knew you were still alive, ask Liz as I do not feel like explaining it again."

"If you four are quite finished…" Havana said.

The group jumped, having completely forgotten the Reaper Alpha was in the room. Well, only Havana was at this point as the others had left some time ago leaving only Havana to remain.

"While you four were conversing, we requisitioned some apartments for you to stay in. If you will come with me…" Havana said.

"_I see."_ Luck said with a barely noticeable frown. _"I will meet you there, my Chosen. I must make sure it is an adequate living space for you." _

Luck gave Jonasan one more squeeze before letting him go and vanishing.

"Adequate?" Havana and Liz said at the same time.

"Lady Luck and Madam Misfortune kinda have high standards for the places I'm staying at. It's borne from the fact that she isn't always able to be around, so she likes to make sure I'll be well taken care of while she's not around." Jonasan said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Does she think us incapable of taking care of someone?" Havana muttered affronted. "Anyway, if you three will follow me, I will take you to your new homes."

…

**Abandoned APE Facility**

The crack in space had expanded into a triangle shape roughly the size of a man. Earthquakes continued to rock the area, slowly increasing in magnitude as the crack, now identifiable as a Time Gate to the magically educated, swelled, destroying the equipment in the room. As the earthquakes reached magnitude 7, the gate bulged. Out of the gate came five quadrupeds, the smallest being slightly larger than a grey wolf and the largest being as tall as a man at the shoulder, two could easily ride on its back.

They had a rough white and black coat, they had huge blue eyes, a color similar to a Husky. If one were to use magic to observe them, they would see that they were wrapped in a white aura that seemed to be generating from the beasts. Their teeth were longer than a regular wolf's, their feet were bigger, their heads were heavier, and more brutish. These were direwolves, creatures that went extinct long ago.

The earth trembled as the air groaned. Space buckled behind the direwolves as the gate slammed shut. The direwolves glanced back at the collapsing gate before looking around. This was a very different environment than the one that they left, but there was a familiar scent in the air. The pack followed the scent as they ascended out of the facility.

…

**Gran Crevasse**

As they were going toward their new apartments, Kurisu caught Jonasan's attention.

"Jonasan." Kurisu said, in Latin letting Jonasan know this was something serious.

"Yes?" He replied, also in Latin.

"Where is _she_?"

"The Barren Steppes."

"Mongolia?"

"Is that what they call it now?"

"How do you not know this?"

"Luck only hit the highlights when she informed me of the history of the earth. So, I know about things like America's development, the first World War, the wizards conference that nearly resulted in World War II, the failed black hole experiment that resulted in the Chernobyl disaster, the rise of APE, ect. Things like the names of unrelated locations were never mentioned."

"Hmm, well not that it matters at this point. Anyway, why is _she_ there? Didn't she like New Zealand?"

"I'm assuming you mean the Peaceful Islands. And she said that she wanted a change of scenery."

Kurisu then smacked Jonasan upside the head.

"You, abandoned, your duties." Kurisu growled.

"I did not. She followed me when I left, otherwise she would have been fine."

"How could she have followed you? She can't breathe in space!"

"I don't know. Whatever world I ended up on, she followed me. Even when I had Luck transport her back to Earth, she reappeared back on the planet I was on a few days later. After she scolded me for several hours about Luck taking her back several times, I eventually just gave up trying to return her to Earth and let her follow me. She is not going to be happy with you by the way."

Kurisu sighed. "I know, I'm dreading that particular conversation. Does she know I'm back?"

"Oh, she knows. If I know, she _definitely_ knows. We're her surrogate children, remember."

"Oh boy."

…

**Abandoned APE Facility**

The five direwolves made their way to the surface, following the scent. The world that they arrived in was far different than the one they just left. Outside of the circle of death that marked the demon's territory, the pack saw swaths of plains with trees growing here and there and tons of saplings. Far different from the forest that was their home they previously left. Speaking of home, the scent that they had been tracking had grown stronger and they were able to identify it as a human that they had befriended a few years ago. Being the only familiar scent, they decided to follow it and see if he could explain what happened.

…

**Gran Crevasse**

_Jonasan, your forgetting something._

"Huh? Oh, right."

"Jonasan, who are you talking to?" Kurisu asked.

Jonasan was walking between Kurisu and Liz as they walked to their new apartments.

"Don't worry about it." Jonasan replied.

Jade's nanobots quickly built up on the tip on Jonasan's fingers making a small pad.

"What do you mean don't…" Kurisu started to say.

Jonasan quickly slapped both Kurisu and Liz upside the head, embedding the nanobots in their heads. Jonasan carefully watch as they both went down, clutching the back of their heads in pain. The two recovered a few minutes later, all the while, Havana was checking over the two while glaring at Jonasan.

"Jonasan." Kurisu growled, as he stood up, clutching the back of his neck. "What. Did. You. Do?"

_Hello Kurisu. I am Jade, an Artificial Intelligence and personal assistant to Jonasan. Hello again as well Liz. What Jonasan had done is installed a subroutine of my main program into the two of you. You will be able to hear me if I need to speak to you as well as if you need to speak to me. I will also act as a relay between Jonasan and yourselves._

"What the fuck?" Kurisu said.

"Jade is an AI. She is my personal assistant and long-time friend. She has saved my ass several times, haven't you my lovely companion?"

Jonasan felt a tingling sensation at the base of his neck, a feeling he associated with Jade being embarrassed.

_I-I-I didn't do all that much Jonasan. I just shut off alarms and disabled cameras. I really didn't do much._

"Ok, but why did you give her to us?" Liz asked.

"Communication Liz, communication. Makes it easier to give intel without telling the enemy about it."

_Indeed. Oh, and Jonasan?_

"Yes?"

_We really need to work on upgrading these satellites. They might as well have thrown out a welcome mat for me to get in. The security is an absolute joke._

"Excuse me!?" Havana said affronted.

_I do not mean to offend._ Jade said as she appeared on Jonasan's shoulder. _But it was incredibly easy for me to break in. The fact that APE wasn't able to penetrate your defenses is surprising._

"Well it was designed to stop humans, not an AI." Jonasan said, in Havana's defense.

_Still, they could have done… Hang on._

"Jade?"

_Satellites are showing 5 large figures approaching the city._

"Demons? Already?" Havana asked. "From where?"

_Not demons. _Jade said as Jonasan's nanobots built a device which displayed a virtual screen which was showing what Jade was seeing on the satellites. The satellites were showing five black shapes moving through the forest surrounding Gran Crevasse. _I'm not sure what they are._

"Jade, can you zoom in?" Kurisu asked.

The camera then zoomed in on the traveling figures.

"Hang on, I recognize that fur pattern. That's Alpha's pack." Kurisu said.

"Alpha?" _Alpha?_ Both Jonasan and Jade asked at the same time.

"Yeah, they are a pack of direwolves I befriended a while ago, they vanished a few months before I did. What are they doing here though?" Kurisu said.

"Vanished… Kurisu, can you check the local area for Temporal Gates?" Jonasan asked, suddenly getting an idea.

"Uhhh, I can try. Hang on."

Kurisu closed his eyes and they began to glow blue. His eyes began to rapidly flick behind his eyelids like he was deep in REM sleep.

"Umm, nothing in the immediate area but…" Kurisu paused. "There are traces of a gate where I was found."

"How?" Havana asked. "Snake has never failed to close a Rift before."

"Well it was four millennia old, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that it temporarily opened again as a gate and something wandered through." Jonasan said.

_Perhaps you should go greet them, they are in an entirely different timeline and perhaps are only heading this way because your scent is familiar._

"Might as well. I wonder, can I fly?" Kurisu said, and to his shock, when he tried, he did.

"Hehe, hehehehe, hehehehehehehehehehehe! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!" Kurisu giggled before shouting in joy as he shot over the walls of Gran Crevasse.

"Aaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnd, he's gone." Liz said shaking her head with a grin at her husband's antics and ran after her foolish husband.

Jonasan suddenly remembered something. "Ah, Havana?"

"Yes?"

Jonasan bowed low to her. "I must apologize for my previous behavior, I greatly overreacted to the situation."

Havana sighed. "Reaper reacted poorly to your entrance and you reacted accordingly, so no harm, no foul. Just make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Yes ma'am." Jonasan said, straightening up. "Can we please continue toward our accommodations?"

"What about your brother and sister-in-law?"

"They will catch up soon enough."

"Very well."

_Jonasan, we really need to work on upgrading the security of these satellites. _

"We will, but _she_ will be here soon, and I don't want to be busy when she arrives."

_Very well, this will certainly be a very interesting conversation._

"Indeed."

…

Code 089: Luck, why did you drag me here?

Luck: Because, I need help deciding on decorations and furniture.

Code 089: You do realize that Jonasan and Havana could walk in, like, any second, right?

Luck: We'll be fine. Purple or blue sheets?

Code 089: I am literally the author of this story and I am in it. I must be breaking some kind of interdimensional law, and purple.

Luck: Nope and thank you.

*Portal opens*

Creator: What are you doing here Author?

Luck: I brought him here. I need his advice; I also need to keep Life away from him.

Code 089: Why?

Luck: Don't worry about it.

Code 089: You have made me very concerned.

Creator: You really shouldn't be here 89.

Code 089: She won't let me return to the Nexus.

Luck: That's because you're not safe there. Life is in that area; therefore, you can't be there.

Code 089: Again, why?

Luck: She wants to do things to you.

Creator: Jonasan and Havana will be here momentarily, I expect you to be gone by then.

*Creator leaves*

Life: *Distantly* 89? Are you in here?

Luck: Time to go.

Code 089: Let me send the audience off first!

Luck: Make it quick.

Code 089: As always, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to roast marshmallows.

Life: I can hear you 89, where are you?

Luck: Now author.

Code 089: Ciao!

Luck: *grabs 089 and runs through a portal*

* * *

**A/N:** My brother, under the name of Kurisu Time here on Fanfiction, has begun writing his own story! Yay! Its a prequel...thing, to this one, explaining how Kurisu got his powers and the various amounts of trouble that he got into before his, lets say, imprisonment, within the Rift. While you wont see the main cast in that story, you will see 001 and the Klaxosaurs later. My brother is still new to writing fanfiction so any _constructive_ criticism would greatly help him, things like improving his story flow, grammar, punctuation, etc. His story link is below, just replace the spaces with dots.

www fanfiction net/s/13298114/1/Darling-in-the-FranXX-The-First-Rider


	4. Chapter 4: Meeting the Rest

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 4: Meeting the Rest

**With Havana and Jonasan**

Havana and Jonasan made idle chit chat as they made their way to the apartment complex that the trio would be staying in. As they approached room 4205 Havana spoke.

"These two apartments will be yours. You will have apartment 4205 and Kurisu will have apartment 4206."

Havana handed Jonasan his apartment key and he opened the door. When they stepped inside, Havana's jaw dropped. It was not an apartment, the apartment she had chosen for the two were studio type apartments, this was a small house. The walls were a combination of sea blue and electric blue with the master bedroom being painted purple with white trim. It had a full kitchen, living room, master bath with a jazzuci bathtub and walk-in shower.

In the living room, above the wood burning fireplace, how such a thing was possible given there were no chimneys in the complex Havana wasn't sure, were several photos. As Havana looked at them, while Jonasan was busy setting up some kind of equipment on the nearby desk and installing Jade in the room, she noticed that most of them were pictures of Jonasan and Lady Luck on some foreign planet, usually with a large expansion of forest or city in the background. A few of the photos, however, had a little girl in them. Some had both Jonasan and Lady Luck with the girl and some it was just Jonasan. The girl appeared to be no more than 7 or 8 years old, she wore a light blue dress with gold trim. She had sea green hair and brown eyes and, in most of the photos, was either riding on Jonasan's shoulders or standing at his feet with Jonasan having his hands on her head.

"Who is she?" Havana asked, looking back at Jonasan.

Jonasan, who had half of his arm within a white tear in space looked at her. "Who?"

Shelving the question of what the white tear was, Havana pointed to the girl in the photo. "Her. Is she your daughter?"

That sent Jonasan rolling on the laughing at the sheer absurdity of the question. Havana stood there staring at Jonasan with a raised eyebrow as he finished laughing and got off the floor.

"Oh Creator," Jonasan said wiping his eyes. "she would get a kick out of hearing you say that. No, no, no, that is a disguised Emotion."

Havana's jaw dropped in shock as she looked back at the photo of the little girl.

"That's Emotion?"

"Yep."

"Why is she with you though, and why as a little girl?"

"Emotion likes to travel with me if Lady Luck is unavailable, which happens more often than you think. As for why she looks like that, that's the disguise that she went with. Why? I have no idea. Speaking of Emotion, I haven't seen her in a while. I wonder what she's up to?"

While Jonasan was talking, Havana noticed that the white tear was still there beside the desk and she decided to ask him about it.

"Jonasan, what is this?" Havana asked, gesturing to the white tear.

"Oh that? That's my Dimensional Storage." Jonasan replied as he walked back over to it.

As Havana opened her mouth to ask a question Jonasan interrupted her.

"Yes, it's based of the Shadow Storage system that Lord Death created for his Riders. Several years after the Chosen system was put in place, I and several others ran into the issue of where to store things as we traveled. After seeing the Shadow Storage system that Lord Death had come up with, the Creator decided to adapt a system for the Chosen using the Shadow Storage system as a framework. He created a separate dimension that the Chosen could access to store anything they came across during their service."

"So, what exactly do you have in there?"

"A variety of things. A whole house's worth of furniture and items at least."

Before Havana could ask another question, her communicator beeped, and Reaper's face appeared on the screen.

"Havana, are you almost finished taking them to their apartments?"

"Yeah, what's wrong?"

"You still have patients to deal with my love, remember?"

"Right, right. I'm on my way." Havana said and ended the call.

She turned to Jonasan. "As much as I would like to stay and chat, I do have work to get back to."

"Its fine Havana, I have my own work to do as well." Jonasan said as she saw Jade impatiently tapping her digital foot on the desk.

Havana laughed. "It seems you do. Well I will leave you to it. If you ever need any medical treatment, please come by my office. Reaper will no doubt want to talk to you later and find out just what it is that you can do as well as introduce you to the current president and senate of our nation. Have a good day Jonasan." Havana then left the apartment.

_Come on Jonasan, we have work to do._

"Yes, yes, I know."

Jade retreated into Jonasan's head. Jade had the nanobots trail down his arm and gather in the palm of his hand. Placing his hand against the wall above the desk, the nanobots built a small node where his hand was before trailing up the wall to build a projector node in the center of the room. They then spread out to the various rooms within the apartment. As this occurred, Jade projected herself into the room.

"Feeling better now, Jade?" Jonasan said.

_Much better._ Jade said, stretching. _I much prefer being my full height to being shrunk down._

"I know, but we didn't exactly have a place to set up a full system."

_But we have one now. Now then, we need to get to work upgrading the Reaper satellites._

"I'm on it." Jonasan said as he sat down at the desk and turned on his computer.

Glancing out the nearby window, Jonasan saw nothing but clear skies but the way the hair on his arms stood up told him that **she** was on her way.

"You know that we only have a small window to work on this right?"

_I'm aware. The subtle changes in the barometric pressure tell me that she is on her way, even though she hasn't built up a storm or been seen on the satellites._

"She's good at concealment, you know that. She has to be for her to live as long as she has."

_I know, but it's still annoying._

Jonasan patted her shoulder, silently still giddy at the fact that the nanobots could make her projections hard light constructs so to allow such things to happen.

"Come on Jade, let's get to work."

…

**Time skip: 2 Hours**

Jonasan glanced up from his work on the satellites when he heard several footsteps pass by in the hallway. Quickly stretching, Jonasan contacted Kurisu via Jade.

"So how did it go? Did you get them straightened out?" Jonasan asked.

"Umm, kinda?" Kurisu replied.

"What do you mean kinda?"

"Well, let's say that I have 5 new familiars/pets…"

"What did you do?"

"Well after I explained what happened to them, I checked them over to make sure that passing through the Time Gate hadn't changed them. Unfortunately, it had. Somehow, passing through the gate caused their auras to be corrupted, gaining a temporal aspect. I wasn't really sure what to do with them, so I asked Death who, in turn, asked Snake who is Reaper Alpha's temporal specialist. Snake told me the same thing had happened with Fang, his familiar, except the temporal aspect was overridden by a shadow attunement thanks to the shadow energy that they leak. He told me that I could either leave them alone and run the risk of the activating their temporal aspect in a fight and killing themselves or taking them in and training them myself. I chose the latter."

"Very well then. What do you think of your accommodations?"

"A bit tight with Alpha's pack in here but we will make do. Liz and I are going to take a nap, wake us up later."

"Sure." Jonasan glanced out the window at the storm clouds on the horizon. "I better not hear you through the walls."

"Jonasan!" Liz shouted over the link, Jonasan could almost imagine her face. "Just what are you implying?!"

"It's been three millennia since you two have seen each other. I highly doubt that you two are going to get some sleep until much later." Jonasan said.

""Jonasan!"" The two shouted over the link.

Jonasan just chuckled, closed the link and got back to work, knocking down yet another firewall that whoever was maintaining the Shadow Gaze threw at them.

…

**Time skip: 3 hours**

Jonasan was trudging down the street, his clothes flapping about him as everyone else darted for cover. The storm had finally reached Gran Crevasse, bringing with it winds in excess of 50 MPH, lightning and large claps of thunder but no rain yet.

Jonasan glanced up as a bolt of lightning lit up the clouds. Deep within the clouds above him, Jonasan could see the outline of a bird although it didn't look very big from this distance. The bird was the reason that Jonasan was out here in the first place, **she** was here and had requested to see him. Jonasan was headed to the largest building in the city, which just so happened to be right next to the hospital that Havana ran.

Jonasan rode the elevator to the top of the building and, when nobody was looking, quickly picked the lock of the stairs to the roof. Stepping on to the roof, Jonasan was buffeted by the gale force winds the storm had created. Glancing up, Jonasan saw that the bird was circling the top of the building and was getting closer, and larger. As the bird landed, its claws caused cracks to appear in the roof as the roof groaned under the strain of supporting her. Just as the bird landed, the door to the roof shot open as Kurisu and Liz came running out after Jonasan although they both stopped in their tracks at the sight of the bird, although for different reasons.

From claws to head, the bird measured about 10 feet tall and was ocean blue with gold eyes. Lightning arced from her wings as she tucked them along her back and observed the three on the roof. She gave off a regal aura that practically demanded respect from those around her. She was the primordial goddess of lightning. The Lady of Storms. The Ruler of the Skies. She was Zenith, the strongest and last of the Thunderbirds.

When Zenith spotted Kurisu, she walked over to him and looked down at him, causing Kurisu to break out in a cold sweat.

"H-Hello Mother." Kurisu said, nervously.

She was also the surrogate mother of the two Arashi.

Zenith to shrieked in Kurisu's face, setting off a round of thunderclaps. Once she had stopped shrieking at him and saw his thoroughly messed up hair, she began to speak.

"_Really? That's all I get? You disappear for four millennia and the first thing you say when you see me again is 'hello mother'?" _Zenith said.

"Well I-" Kurisu started to say.

"_Silence."_ Zenith said and Kurisu shut up. _"Now then, explain to me __**exactly**__ what happened."_

Kurisu quickly explained what happened to him and where he had gone. After he had finished, he waited in tense silence for Zenith's response.

"_I see…"_

Kurisu began to sweat bullets at this answer.

"_Well since it was out of your control,"_ Zenith leaned down and tapped Kurisu on the head with her beak. _"I will forgive you,__** this time.**__"_

Kurisu let out a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his forehead, but Zenith wasn't done yet, however.

"_But,"_ Zenith said as she loomed over Kurisu, _"disappear on me again, and I will not hesitate to flood your body with a million teravolts. Am I understood?"_

"Y-y-yes ma'am." Kurisu said nervously.

"_Good."_ Zenith then turned to look at Liz. _"Hello Elizabeth. It seems that you are doing better."_

"I am now, Zenith." Liz replied hugging Kurisu.

"_It seems so."_ Zenith then leaned in and peered at Liz's face. _"Hmm, although you are not perfectly fine yet, your eyes are still corrupted by your bloodshed." _

Liz said nothing.

Zenith sighed. _"While I can't condone your actions, I do understand them. Each of us grieve differently."_

Liz still said nothing but gave a small nod of acknowledgement. Zenith then turned her attention toward Jonasan.

"_Hello, my child, it's been a while since we've last seen each other."_

"Mother, it's only been 7 years, 150 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes and 15 seconds since we last saw each other. That's not _that _long."

Zenith lightly jolted Jonasan with a bolt of lightning which he easily shrugged off.

"_That may be, but a lot can change in that span of time."_

Jonasan just shook his head with a smile on his face.

"_Jonasan, look at me."_

"Yes ma'am."

As Jonasan looked at Zenith, her golden eyes began to glow and Jonasan's blue ones did the same. As this was going on Liz looked at Kurisu who was unbothered by what was happening, she decided to ask him what was going on.

"Hey Kurisu, what is she doing?" Liz whispered.

"Checking the stability of Jonasan's mind and shoring it up if necessary." Kurisu replied.

Liz nodded in understanding. Jonasan was not the most stable of people, the phrase "too smart for your own good" was literal in his case. His own intelligence could be his downfall. Jonasan already had several cases where his intelligence led to temporary bouts of insanity 4 millennia ago, and while being picked up by those two might have helped some, Kurisu's disappearance/death and her subsequently up and leaving might have caused more damage. Add in his current age and you have a recipe for potential disaster.

Little did she know that she wasn't far off the mark.

Zenith's eyes stopped glowing and she cocked her head at Jonasan. His eyes stopped glowing moments later and Jonasan shook his head before gripping it in pain.

"Are you alright, Jonasan?" Liz asked, Kurisu was equally concerned, that hadn't happened before.

"Yup." Jonasan said with a pained grimace before casting a tier 2 healing spell on himself.

The three of them then heard Zenith muttering something about having to speak with Luck before spreading her wings.

"Leaving so soon Zenith?" Kurisu asked.

"_Unfortunately." _Zenith said._ "There's a pair of Reaper's on their way up here and I would rather not have my existence be revealed."_ Zenith then took off back into the storm clouds.

"Will you go back to the Barren Steppes?" Jonasan asked via telepathy which caused Kurisu to look at him in shock.

"_No, I will simply be in the mountains nearby. I refuse to be separated from the two of you again."_

"Very well, take care Zenith."

As Zenith flew off, she loosened her control on the storm, allowing the rain to finally fall. The residents below quickly ran for cover, meanwhile the trio on the roof just stood there, getting slowly soaked.

"Since when," Kurisu asked in complete shock. "could she do that!?"

"Uhhh, for about 2 millennia. She picked it up from me when I learned it on Chapus 1, although hers is more of a targeted telepathy, meaning she can only talk to the three of us. Now, I don't know about you two, but I don't intend to let those two Reapers find me up here, it would cause too many questions." Jonasan said as he walked backward toward the edge of the building.

"Jonasan, what do you plan on doing?" Liz asked getting more concerned with each step he took toward the edge.

"Isn't it obvious?" Jonasan asked as he tilted his head. "I'm taking the express elevator down." He then did a back flip off the edge of the building.

"JONASAN!" Liz shouted as she and Kurisu ran to the edge of the building and looked down.

They saw Jonasan sliding down the side of the building, covered in a white glow. Just as he was about to hit the ground, an awning opened below him causing him to tumble right into it, effectively killing his momentum. He then jumped off the side of the awning and thanked the extremely confused lady who opened it. Both Kurisu and Liz looked at each other.

"Are you sure he's still sane?" Liz asked.

"I'm not sure anymore." Kurisu said slowly. "Shall we go as well?"

"Sure."

Kurisu grabbed Liz by the waist as she put her arms around his neck. Kurisu the gently floated them down from the top of the building. As they touched down Jonasan cast a water repulsion spell over the three of them so that they stopped getting rained on.

"Jonasan?" Liz said in a sweet tone of voice.

"Y-yes?" he replied nervously.

"Come here."

"Ok?"

*Slap*

"Ow!"

"Don't do that again."

"I make no promises."

Liz let out a sigh of exasperation and Jonasan sniggered as they made their way back to their rooms.

…

**Time skip: 2 Hours**

Two hours had passed since the trio met Zenith. They had returned to their rooms with Kurisu and Liz getting some sleep and Jonasan and Jade finally finishing the upgrades to the Shadow Gaze. Jonasan was just about to fall asleep when he got interrupted by a phone call.

_Incoming call._

"Ugh. Answer call."

_Answering._

"Ita?" (Yes?)

"Is this Jonasan?" A female voice asked.

"Yes." Jonasan said as he got out of bed. "Who am I speaking to?"

"I am Nana, Director of communications here in Gran Crevasse. Our president, Ichigo, has requested to see you as well as your brother and Liz at the capitol."

"Always after work is done, never before." Jonasan muttered. "Alright I'll grab those two and we will make our way there."

"One more thing." Nana said.

"Yes?"

"Stay out of my system."

Jonasan just chuckled and Jade closed the call as the nanobots reassembled Jonasan's clothing.

"Tibi gratias ago Jade." (Thank you Jade)

_Your welcome._

Jonasan walked out of his room and knocked and Liz and Kurisu's door.

*Knock Knock Knock*

"Oi, you two! Get up, we have places to be." Jonasan said.

Silence.

Jonasan knocked again.

"Come on you two, someone wants to see us."

Again silence.

"*Sigh* I have an airhorn and I know how to use it."

Footsteps were heard behind the door before it was unlocked and opened.

"Quid in irrumabo vis, erant 'trying ut dormiam." (What the fuck do you want, we're trying to sleep.) Kurisu grumbled.

Jonasan raised an eyebrow. "Praesidis rogatus est ad nos." (The president has requested to see us.)

"Et popularis ratio utor a hic?" (They use a democratic system here?)

"Videtur." (Apparently.)

"Licuit, licet. Da mi paucis minutis ad Liz et movere." (Alright, alright. Give me a few minutes to get Liz up and moving.)

Kurisu grumbled as he closed the door. Jonasan then heard indistinct shouting and the sound something hitting a wall, most likely Kurisu, which caused him to laugh. The door opened a few minutes later with Kurisu walking out with a large handprint on the side of his face.

"Non unum est." (Not one word.) Kurisu threatened.

"Non dicere aliquid." (I didn't say a thing.) Jonasan said while struggling to keep a straight face.

…

The trio made their way back to the capitol and were directed to a what was their version of the oval office. When they walked in, they were greeted by a large group of people: Reaper Alpha, A group of 10 that were clustered around the main desk, a smaller, younger, group of 5 that were off to the side, and two other people that were by the door, a brownish-red haired woman and a dark blue haired man.

"You requested to see us President?" Jonasan said.

"Yes. It appears that Reaper Alpha knows of you, yet we do not know of you nor your intentions." Ichigo said.

"So, it seems that in introduction is in order." Liz said.

"Indeed."

Kurisu decided to start off first. "Kurisu Arashi. Brother to Jonasan Arashi and husband to Elizabeth Arashi, first human rider of Lord Death and recently granted divinity. My abilities include Elemental Manipulation, Photo-Umbrakinesis, and Chronokinesis."

"Chronokinesis?" Ikuno asked.

"Chronokinesis or Temporal Manipulation: the ability to change and affect the flow of the temporal continuum." Jonasan rattled off.

Several eyebrows went up at that one.

"Is how different is Photo-Umbrakinesis from our Umbrakinesis?" One of the guys from the smaller group muttered to one of the girls.

"I'm not sure." She muttered back.

"Photo-Umbrakinesis is the manipulation of both Light and Shadow as opposed to just Shadow. Extremely useful against other Umbrakinetics." Jonasan said.

"How did you hear me?" The boy asked in shock.

Jonasan tapped his ear. "Sensitive hearing. I heard you as clearly as if you were speaking right next to me."

"And who are you?" Hiro asked, he did not like the look of that white coat thing.

"Ah, my apologies. Jonasan Arashi. Brother to Kurisu Arashi and brother-in-law to Liz Arashi. Chosen of the Fortune Duo and wandering healer and scientist." That last one made the group of 10 tense up, especially the two horned ones but Jonasan filed that away for later and continued on. "My abilities are Electrokinesis and Probability Manipulation."

"You can alter probability? I'm going to need a demonstration for that if you don't mind." Ichigo said.

"Not at all President. Skepticism is quite common when dealing with probability. Liz? Do you mind being an assistant for my demonstration?"

"Fine, but you better not hurt me."

"Of course not Liz."

Jonasan walked over to her and tapped her shoulder with a purple finger. He then gestured to the nearby wall.

"Freeze it."

Liz shrugged and threw an Ice Bolt at the wall, but instead of freezing the wall, the spell fizzled before it got there. Jonasan looked back at Ichigo.

"Bad luck. The spell fizzled before it reached its target, something that is a near impossibility for a veteran spellcaster like Liz." He turned back toward Liz. "Freeze it now."

Again, Liz shot an Ice Bolt at the wall and this time it froze the wall with two inches of solid ice. Jonasan looked back at Ichigo.

"And now the spell works properly, displaying the amount of control someone like Liz should have."

"But now there is an ice wall in my office." Ichigo said.

"Easily dealt with." Jonasan replied.

Jonasan coated his fingers in white energy and snapped them. The ice wall then cracked, crumbled and evaporated, all within the space of a few seconds.

"Another impossibility. The ice wall crumbled and evaporated in a matter of seconds, good luck in this case. Yours to be exact." Jonasan said gesturing to Ichigo.

"Mine?" She asked.

"Quite. You wanted the ice wall gone so I used some of your good luck to do it. Don't worry you have plenty left."

"Is your control just limited to minor changes in probability?" Nana asked.

"Not at all." Jonasan said, shaking his head. "I can go from minor changes to full blown natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanos, and hurricanes to planet annihilation."

Everybody stared at him with wide eyes.

"What?" Jonasan said. "I've only had to destroy 5 planets, and its only because they were a threat to the system they were located in. I don't like killing billions of creatures."

"That still makes you very terrifying Jonasan." Kurisu said.

"I don't kill unless I have to Kurisu, you know that."

"A-anyway," Ichigo said with a shaky voice.

"Ah right. Sorry. Liz?" Jonasan said.

"Liz Arashi. Wife to Kurisu Arashi, sister-in-law to Jonasan Arashi, and second human rider of Lord Death. My ability is Cryokinesis, as you just saw."

"We've introduced ourselves, but we don't know all of you, well, maybe Kurisu does being trapped in the temporal continuity and all but myself and Liz certainly don't." Jonasan said.

_Jonasan, you forgot to introduce me._

"Ah, oh right, sorry." Jonasan said.

He held out a hand and the nanobots built Jade's projection platform and she appeared in his hand.

_Hello. I am an A.I. or Artificial Intelligence, my designation is JADE. Nice to meet you._

"Artificial Intelligence?" Nana muttered.

Jade bowed to the group before disappearing. "Now then, who are all of you?" Jonasan asked tilting his head.

"I am Ichigo, the current president of earth. To my right is Goro, my Vice President and partner. Behind him are Ikuno and Futoshi. To my left is Zorome and his partner Miku, behind those to Kokoro and Mitsuru and finally the last two are Hiro and Zero Two."

Jonasan tilted his head again as he looked at Hiro and Zero Two causing Zero Two to retreat behind Hiro and causing Hiro as well as some of the others to glare at him. Jonasan mentally sighed, evidently, these 10 have had some bad experiences with scientists. That was an issue that he would have to deal with soon. Reaper then cleared this throat.

"Anyway, they are Reaper Beta or Squad 13 from their old designation. These 5 over here are our children. Amelia which is my and Havana's daughter." The girl from earlier stepped forward and bowed. "Yuuto, Crow and Raven's son," A nod, "Ayaka, James and Owl's daughter," She waved hello, "Yumiko, Snake and Ikuno's daughter," another bow, "and finally Ryuu, Cypress and Naomi's son."

"And the two in the back are Nana, Director of Communications and Hachi Director of Defenses." Cypress said.

"Now that we have that out of the way," Ichigo said. "What are your intentions now that you're here?"

"Stick with these two and fight." Jonasan said without hesitation. "Kurisu has already pledged himself to the Creator and I have a bit of beef with two of the elemental gods so I'm siding with the Creator as well."

"As will I. I lost my husband once; I will not do so again." Liz said.

"Very well then. What do you know about…" Ichigo was interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Goro asked.

"Zuriel."

"Enter." Ichigo said.

As Zuriel entered the room to give a report to Ichigo, the trio moved off to the side and leaned up against one of the walls. As they did so Kurisu had to ask,

"What did one of the Elementals do to you?"

"Let's just say that I will never eat a popsicle again, and that the two were very lucky that they weren't around when Luck found out what they did." Jonasan said shaking his head. "That planet will never be the same."

Zuriel finished giving her report and began to make her way out of the room, but before she got to the door, she noticed Kurisu leaning up against the wall and let out a groan.

"Oh great, it's the bastard that thinks he's better than everyone else. Where in the name of the Creator did, they find him?" Zuriel said loud enough for Kurisu to hear.

"Oh look, it the bitch with the superiority complex. Finally got off your high horse, did you?" Kurisu shot back.

As the two began throwing insults at each other Liz walked over to the pair and began to try and break up the arguing pair, much to the amusement of everyone else. This continued on for several minutes until Liz finally had enough.

"If you two don't stop arguing in the next five seconds, I will freeze the both of you in a block of ice!" Liz shouted.

The two looked at her and were about to speak but quickly shut up as they saw the frost begin to form around them.

"Go ahead, try me." Liz threatened.

After that threatening statement, Zuriel quickly turned and left the room. The trio then turned back towards Ichigo.

"Is there anything else you need from us President Ichigo?" Liz asked.

Jonasan again cast a curious glance at Hiro and Zero Two and sighed at the glare he received in response. Yes, that was definitely a matter that he would have to settle, and quickly.

"No that was all we needed from you three. If there is anything you need from us, don't hesitate to ask Reaper Alpha or us directly."

"''Thank you, President.''" The three said, they then turned and left.

…

The three decided to take the long way back to their apartments, giving them a change to explore the city. As they walked Kurisu spoke.

"Jonasan, you aren't serious about helping us fight, are you?"

"Of course, I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Jonasan, you are primarily a healer with some combat proficiency." Kurisu said with a sigh.

"Yeah, and?"

"We are going to be dealing with groups of upwards of a hundred demons at any given time, you're not built for that. Your proficiency has you built for short skirmishes that end within a few minutes or at most an hour, not a battle that can go on for as long as 8 hours. Your healing will keep you going for a time, but eventually you will falter."

"Kurisu, until you have fought off endless waves of horny succubi, you have no right to say that to me." Jonasan deadpanned.

"Where in Death's name did that happen?" Liz asked in shock.

"On a planet called Kotov. Some lunatic opened a portal to the devil city of Eahfast and the succubi came pouring out of the portal. I had to fight off those damn things for 12 hours until Misfortune showed up and blew the portal into oblivion. I was sure that Lilith was going to come through that damn portal for a while there."

"Are you talking about me dear?" Someone said into Jonasan's ear.

Jonasan quickly drew Joy and Sorrow, his twin crystal daggers and spun around strike whoever had snuck up on him, only to find his daggers blocked by Lilith's nails.

"My, that's quite the reaction time. No wonder you were able to hold off my sisters for so long." Lilith said.

"What are you doing here Lilith?" Kurisu asked.

"Do stand down Jonasan, I mean you no harm."

"I'll believe that when I see it." Jonasan muttered as he sheathed his daggers.

"I'm not attacking you now, now am I? At any rate I am a familiar of Crow so I can go where I please. Knowledge has a message for you Kurisu."

"And that is?" Kurisu asked.

"Not all blades are the same as they once were."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, I guess you'll have to find out. Ta ta." Lilith then sprouted her bat wings and flew off.

"Ummmm, ok? I'm very confused." Kurisu said.

"Oh boy he's being difficult today." Jonasan muttered.

"What are you talking about?" Liz asked.

"Knowledge believes that experience is the best teacher, so he often speaks in riddles or is extremely vague. It's something we will no doubt find out later during testing."

"Testing?" Kurisu asked.

"Yup." Jonasan said, popping the p. "Being granted divinity has changed no doubt changed some of your abilities so I want to run through them all and record any of the changes."

"You're not planning on doing that today are you?" Liz asked.

"No. We don't have enough time for that. Kurisu what did you stop for?"

They were walking near the airfield within the city and Kurisu had stopped and was staring at several rusting APE dropships.

Kurisu hummed and waved a hand and two shadow portals opened underneath two of the dropships causing them to fall in.

"What do you need those for?" Jonasan asked.

"A certain project I had in mind, but that's for another day. Come on, let's get going. I want to get some more sleep.

…

**Time skip: 2 Hours**

The day was approaching its end when Jonasan decided to address the elephant in the room.

"Jade, can you call Nana please?"

_Of course._

A holodisk appeared around Jonasan's right ear and slowly began to spin as he waited for Nana to pick up.

"Yes Jonasan?" Nana said.

"Can you send Hiro and Zero Two to my apartment please? There is something I would like to discuss with them."

"I'm sorry Jonasan but I can't allow that." Nana said, Jonasan could detect an undertone of mistrust in her voice.

"*Sigh* Nana, I mean no harm to the two of them. If you would like you can send someone to accompany them to make sure that I don't harm them, but I really do need to talk to them."

Nana was silent on the other end of the line for a few minutes.

"Give me 10 minutes." Was her reply before she hung up.

"Alrighty then." Jonasan said, with mild confusion but he had no choice but to settle in and wait for them to arrive.

Exactly 10 minutes later, there was a knock on Jonasan's door.

"Enter."

To Jonasan's surprise, aside from Hiro and Zero Two, both Nana and Hachi entered behind them. This was an unexpected but interesting development.

"Jade, I'm going to need four chairs. The nicer ones please."

_On it._

"What the…" Hachi said in shock as the group watched as three chairs were seemingly built out of nothing before their very eyes.

"Nanobots, swarms of microscopic robots that can build or do almost anything. It's part of one of Jade's subsystems. Please have a seat." Jonasan said as he gestured to the completed chairs.

Once they group seated themselves, Jonasan explained why he called them here.

"I noticed your reactions to one of my titles during my introduction. Am I safe in assuming that you have some bad experiences with scientists or researchers in the past?"

"You could say that." Hiro said with a bit of anger.

"Can you describe what he or she did that made you feel this way?" Jonasan noticed their expressions. "If it makes you uncomfortable to explain, you don't have to."

Hiro and Zero Two looked at each other, unhappy expressions on their faces before looking at Nana. She sighed and explained for them.

"Abuse, neglect, imprisonment for Zero Two and experimentation while not under the effects of anesthesia for the both of them."

Both Nana and Hachi noted the faint purple aura that surrounded Jonasan when she explained what happened to the two hybrids.

"Tell me," Jonasan said in a tightly controlled voice. "is this…_individual_… still around?"

"No." Hachi said. "Dr. Franxx was killed in the Second Battle of the Gran Crevasse."

"Shame. I was going to teach this Dr. Franxx," Jonasan spat out the name like it was poison. "a _lesson_ in ethics but it appears that Lord Death has done my job for me."

The purple aura vanished as Jonasan recomposed himself.

"I call the two of you up here to explain how I do things as well as ask a few questions of the two of you. I'm hoping that by explaining how I operate that it will make you more comfortable around me as I am helping to fight in this war, and we will no doubt be seeing a lot of each other. I know that this will not fully rid the two of you of your apprehension but I'm hoping it will help."

"Very well." Nana said.

"A lot of my research is done through observation or qualitative analysis. I look at behaviors, habits, reactions to certain situations, things like that. If I need something explained to me, I will do like I did today, call you up here and either ask you outright, or describe to you a situation and you tell me what you're first reaction would be, if I need further explanation I will expand the situation. If any question or any situation makes you too uncomfortable to answer, tell me, and I will kill that line of thought, no questions asked. I will _never_ under any circumstance, cause either of you physical or psychological harm _without_ your consent. To do so violates every single ethics agreement of science and I would rather have my brother execute me than to stoop so low." Jonasan paused for a moment. "Does this help ease for minds, even just a little bit?"

"A bit yes." Nana said. "It is a relief that your methods are not the same as Dr. Franxx's."

Hiro and Zero Two both nodded in agreement.

"You mentioned that you had a few questions for them." Hachi said.

"I do." Jonasan replied. "Two of them in fact."

"What are they?" Zero Two asked.

"The first is, and I apologize if this seems incredibly rude, what are you two? I know that you're half human but what is your other half?"

"Klaxosaur." Hiro replied. "We're Klaxosaur-Human Hybrids."

"Fascinating." Jonasan muttered.

"And your other question?" Hachi asked, he had a feeling that he wouldn't like this next one.

Jonasan exhaled. "Please keep an open mind on this next one and don't answer immediately. Given what you know about my methods, will you allow me to study you?"

Hachi and both opened their mouths to reject but surprisingly Zero Two waved them off.

"Why do you want to study me and my Darling?" Zero Two asked.

"One extremely important reason," Jonasan replied, unfazed by the question. "hybrid species are extremely rare. Of the…" Jonasan trailed off and looked at Jade who was watching the conversation.

_1,328 sentient species, 5,872 overall._

"Thank you. Of the sentient species that Jade and I have cataloged during our travels, only 5 of them were a hybrid of two different species, and, as much as I hate to say it, hybrid species don't tend to last long due to interbreeding with other species. That's why I tend to do my best to catalog as much about them as I can before they disappear."

"_If_ we were to say yes, would your questions be asked of the both of us?" Hiro asked.

Jonasan noted the emphasis on the if. "Would I ask questions of the both of you? Yes. More of the would, however, lean more towards Zero Two here as, as I understand it, you, Hiro, were raised within the parasite system. That means that you are a recent conversion and have a more human thought process. Zero Two, on the other hand, has been a hybrid all her life and has had less exposure to the parasite system."

There was a brief silence after that statement.

"I implore you two to simply think about it. You do not have to answer today, tomorrow, or anytime this week. Whenever you feel comfortable giving your response, do so. I have 4 millennia of patience under my belt, I can wait a long time." Jonasan finished with a smile.

"We will think about it." Hiro said.

"That's all I ask for. You may leave."

Jonasan watched them walk out as Jade ordered the nanobot to break down the chairs. Once they finally left the room Jonasan let out a huge sigh and slumped down in his chair.

"Well that went better than expected." Jonasan muttered.

_I told you that it had an 80% chance of succeeding. _

"I know but that other 20% was still lingering in the back of my mind."

_I know. Jonasan, it is 10:17 PM local time and you haven't slept for several weeks and have done a lot today. May I suggest you go to sleep before your body forces you to go to sleep?_

"I'm working on it; I'm working on it." Jonasan said as he got up.

Jonasan changed into his nightclothes and crawled onto the queen-sized bed and let out a groan of satisfaction.

"Thank you, Luck, for giving me such a nice bed." Jonasan muttered before knocking out cold.

Jade chuckled and shut off all the lights in the apartment.

_Rest well master, there will be plenty of work to do in the morning._ Jade said before going into sleep mode.

…

Luck teleported into Jonasan's apartment and was surprised to find everything dark.

"_Is he out?"_ She muttered before checking the apartment.

Luck was extremely surprised to find her Chosen asleep in the bed she made for him. It was rare for Jonasan to sleep, he was usually up researching something or writing down his various findings in one of his journals.

"_Although, with Kurisu coming back into the picture, this might happen more often."_ She muttered.

Both she and Misfortune had no problem with this as it meant that they got to spend more time with their Chosen. With a quiet snap of her fingers, Luck changed into a silken nightgown and crawled into bed with Jonasan and let out a contented sigh as she felt him unconsciously cuddle up to her. Once again reminding her that, even though he will vocally deny it, on a subconscious level, her chosen did love her. With that thought filling her mind, she fell asleep with her chosen.

…

Code 089: Well she looks happy, doesn't she?

Death: Indeed, she does, let's hope the Creator doesn't find her like that.

Code 089: He won't.

?: Oh, is the nomad up to something he shouldn't be?

Code 089: You have three seconds to get out of my Nexus. I haven't even introduced you yet!

?: So? If he is doing something he shouldn't be, I need to know about it. Now let me see.

Code 089: Death?

Death: *Opens shadow portal* Out. *Grabs ? and throws him through the portal*

Code 089: Thank you Death.

Death: No problem, he's a pain to most of us anyway.

Code 089: Anyway, with that out of the way, as always, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to roast marshmallows. Ciao!

* * *

**A/N: **Before anyone says anything, yes, I am aware that Jonasan's abilities make him extremely broken. However, most of his world destroying power is locked behind a special seal that will be shown off later. The most that Jonasan will do is minor acts of Probability Manipulation, granting good luck, cursing someone with bad luck, increasing the potency of spells etc. in this story. Jonasan's main offensive capabilities come from technology and his Electrokinesis which will be displayed later.


	5. Christmas Special

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Christmas Special

(**A/N:** I know, not a main chapter but I'm working on it. Should be out in a few weeks, hopefully. Happy holidays everyone!)

…

Kurisu and Jonasan were walking through the streets of Gran Crevasse. Liz had kicked Kurisu out of the apartment for a while and told him to go for a walk with Jonasan. Kurisu was immensely confused as they hadn't been arguing recently but he did as she asked. There were several decorations covering the buildings within the city and trees could be seen within the windows of apartments and houses.

"It's good to the that the tradition of Christmas has continued despite the Collapse." Kurisu said.

"That probably mostly due to Reaper Alpha as they were the only ones who would remember the exact date." Jonasan said.

Today's date was December 19, XXXX or Christmas Eve. There were people running from store to store buying last-minute gifts. December 20th, tomorrow, was the day that the Creator started to make the universe. The next major holiday was New Year's Eve, December 31st, the day before the Creator set the universe into motion.

"You do realize that that is the reason Liz kicked you out for a bit, right?"

Kurisu facepalmed. "I am an idiot."

"At times yes. You think Liz will still do the hunt tomorrow?"

"Yes. It's not Christmas if I'm not turning the house upside down looking for the presents. Did Liz give you your presents already?"

"Yup and I gave her both of your presents. Good luck by the way."

"Thanks, I'm probably going to need it. I know I'm going to spend half the day tomorrow looking for them. Speaking of tomorrow, what are you going to do? Join Liz in watching me tear up the apartment?"

"Nope. I'll be spending the day with Lady Luck and Jade."

"Just you guys?"

"Yup, most Chosen spend the holidays with their god/goddess. We exchange presents and just spend the day together."

Kurisu's wrist began to vibrate.

_Incoming call from Liz._ Jade said helpfully.

Kurisu pulled down his sleeve and swiped across his new communicator, an early gift from Reaper, and a projection of Liz appeared.

"Hello?" Kurisu asked.

"Hello love, you can come back to the apartment now." Liz said.

"Presents are all hidden then?"

"Yup."

"Are they hidden well?" Jonasan said with a raised eyebrow.

An evil smile crossed her face. "Yes, yes they are."

Jonasan patted Kurisu on the shoulder. "Have fun with that."

"I'll be home soon." Kurisu said.

"See you soon Kurisu."

Kurisu closed the call and looked at Jonasan. "Are you coming with?"

"Nah, I'll keep wandering around a little longer. Go home without me."

"Alright."

Kurisu then turned around and began to walk back to his apartment as Jonasan continued his walk through the city.

…

Jonasan was standing on top of the walls surrounding Gran Crevasse and was looking down into the city. The angels that normally guarded the walls had been given two days' leave to return to Heaven and celebrate with the others, so the walls were empty.

_It's a bit warm for December, isn't it? _Jade asked.

"What's the current temperature?"

_29.4 degrees Celsius._ (85 degrees Fahrenheit)

"For this far north, yes it's too warm. Life must not have gotten this far in repairing the climate before the war started. It should be snowing by now, ah well."

"_We might be able to help with that."_ A voice said.

Jonasan turned around and saw Ice and Water approaching him. Jonasan quickly prepared two Class 5 lightning spells, it would, hopefully, be enough to drive the two away and not bother the citizenry below.

"_Peace Chosen, the Council has called a temporary ceasefire until the holidays have passed." _Water said holding up her hands.

Jonasan slowly canceled the spells, making sure to keep a constant eye on the two, just in case.

"What do you two want? You generally don't like me at the best of times so why approach me now?"

"_We were feeling a bit generous and have decided to visit the few human cities that have developed and give them a gift." _Water said.

"What kind of gift?"

"_Snow." _Ice said with a small smile.

"Who are you and what have you done with Ice?" Jonasan said with a blank face. "You have never displayed so much emotion in your entire existence."

"_That might have been my doing."_ Another voice said.

Above the two goddesses, a little girl appeared. She was wearing a green kimono with red falling flower petals on it. She had sea-green hair and startling gold eyes. The girl also had two small wings on her back. The girl quickly flew over to Jonasan and gave him a hug.

"Hello Emotion, merry Christmas." Jonasan said as he reached into his Dimensional Storage and pulled out a small gift and handed it to her.

"_Thank you, thank you, thank you!" _Emotion said as she gave him another hug.

"You're welcome." Emotion then gave him the Puppy Dog Eyes look. "You can open it."

"_Yay!"_

"After you explain to me what you did to Ice."

"_I didn't really do anything. She was being mean to be in the Council Room and Love caught her."_

Jonasan winced in sympathy. Lady Love was very strict when it came to discipline.

"_Love told me that I could decide her punishment, so I told her she had to be nice and smile. The snow thing was Water's idea."_

Emotion then promptly tore into the present and squealed at what was inside. It was a small garnet necklace with a silver chain.

"_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I love it!"_

"Do you want me to help you put it on?"

"_Please?"_

Emotion landed in front of him and he gently put the necklace on her.

"There you go."

"_Thank you."_

When the two looked back at Ice and Water, Jonasan saw that Ice had an exasperated expression while Water was staring at the two of them with stars in her eyes.

"_Come on Ice we have things to do." _Water said.

"_Fine."_ Ice said.

The two raised their hands and two circles appeared above their heads. Clouds began to gather and moments later snow began to gently fall.

Jonasan could hear the exclamations of awe from the people below as many of the younger generations had never seen snow before.

"Thank you." Jonasan said quietly as he observed the reactions of the people below, Emotion sitting behind his head.

Jonasan was not expecting the sudden hug he received from Water. When he turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow, she only gave one response.

"_Merry Christmas, Jonasan Arashi."_


	6. Chapter 5: Training

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 5: Training

When Luck awoke the next morning, she was quite surprised to find that Jonasan was still asleep beside her. This was extremely unusual as Jonasan was an early riser, checking the clock on the bedside, Luck saw that it was 8:15 A.M. As much as she wanted to lay next to her Chosen for a while, this was a rare opportunity for her to cook breakfast for her Chosen and she decided to take it.

Getting out of the bed, Luck changed out of her nightgown leaving her in only a pair of purple lingerie. Luck quietly exited the master bedroom and made her way toward the kitchen. The lights began to turn on as she went down the hallway.

"_Good morning, Jade."_ Luck said as she entered the kitchen.

_Good morning, Lady Luck._ Jade said politely.

To anyone else, that statement would appear to be a normal statement, but Luck had been around Jade long enough to hear the forced politeness.

"_I'm surprised that Jonasan is still asleep, he is normally up before me."_

_I may have had something to do with that._ Jade said as she appeared in the kitchen.

"_What do you mean?"_

_I may have increased the melatonin levels in his brain to keep him asleep._

Luck sighed as she began to pull down the ingredients to breakfast. On the menu today, pancakes with a side of bacon, eggs, and hash browns.

"_What do you want Jade?"_

_Don't think that I didn't notice you crawled into bed with Master last night. And shouldn't you be wearing something a bit more…formal? Given your position._

Luck rose an eyebrow. Is she really doing this right now?

"_Should I remind you that you are wearing even less than I am?"_

It was true, Jade wore not a stitch of clothing on her digital body. The only reason that it didn't bother Jonasan was that he knew that she was an AI.

_At least my actions can get Master removed from the universe!_ Jade seethed. _If any other god or goddess had walked in on that scene, they would have told the Creator! It's bad enough that Death knows and the only reason your safe is because Death doesn't care._

The punishment for Chosen having an affair with their god or goddess is severe. Removal of their status as a Chosen, loss of their immortality, and execution by the Creator for defiling their God or Goddess. And the most severe punishment, in Jonasan's case at least, was the removal of their name from history. Nobody would remember them, no family members, all work would be removed from any archives and any traces of the removed entirely.

Luck crossed her arms under her breasts as she finished cooking the pancakes. _"Are you jealous Jade?"_

_AI can't feel that emotion._ Jade said robotically. _It's my job to keep Master alive, you sleeping with him as well as acting like a love-struck puppy around him isn't going to keep him alive._

"_Jade I've been like this for the past 4,563 years."_ Luck said as she went back to cooking breakfast. _"My feelings for him are not going to change at the drop of a hat just because you want me to. Love doesn't work that way."_

_Work on it then. I won't have my Master die to your obsession with him._

"_Jade…"_ Luck growled as she began to shift.

The two heard footsteps approaching, and Jade realized that Jonasan had woken up when she wasn't paying attention.

"_This conversation isn't over."_ Luck/Misfortune growled as she finished breakfast and Jade vanished.

Jonasan walked into the kitchen and had to quickly back out and use a class 2 healing spell on himself to stop the sudden nosebleed he got at seeing his goddess nearly naked.

"_Jonasan, are you alright?"_ Luck asked from the kitchen.

"I'm fine, Luck. Just give me a minute." Jonasan replied, trying to heal the nosebleed.

After getting the nosebleed under control, Jonasan walked into the kitchen where Luck was just finishing breakfast.

"When, uhhh, when did you get here Luck?" Jonasan asked trying his best not to stare or get another nosebleed.

"_Late last night. I came to see how you were settling in but when I came in you were out cold on the bed, so I decided to spend the night."_ Luck shut off the stove and brought the food to the dining table, she saw that Jonasan had his head turned away from her. _"What's the matter, love? Do you not like what I'm wearing?"_

"No, no, no, I like it, it's just…." Jonasan was blushing crimson.

Luck reached across the table and gently made him look at her. _"Love, I don't mind if you stare."_

Luck released him and Jonasan immediately turned his head again. Luck then grabbed him and made him look at her, she released him, and he looked away again. The cycle kept repeating.

"_Love, I'm not going to stop until you look at me without turning your head away."_

"Why?"

"_Because."_

He eventually was able to keep looking at her without looking away and breakfast resumed.

After breakfast and while the two of them were cleaning the dishes, Jonasan got a message from Kurisu.

"_Jonasan, are you up?" _Kurisu asked.

"_Yeah. What's up?" _Jonasan replied.

"_Can you come over here for a moment? I've got something I need you to look at."_

"_On my way."_

"_Work to do?"_ Luck asked.

"Yup. Apparently, Kurisu has a present for me." Jonasan said as he got up from the table, Luck stood up with him.

"_Unfortunate. And I was hoping to spend some more time with you." _Luck said, disappointed.

"Sorry, Luck."

"_Not much you can do about it." _Luck said as she walked over to Jonasan.

Luck tilted Jonasan's head up slightly and kissed him on the lips. (Luck is 5'9 while Misfortune is 5'10)

"Mph!?"

A solid minute later Luck broke the kiss.

"_Have a good day, love."_ Luck said, as her regular clothes appeared on her and she vanished.

Jonasan stood there alone in his apartment for a moment. "What the hell just happened?"

…

Jonasan walked over to Kurisu and Liz's door and knocked, Liz opened the door a moment later.

"Morning Jonasan." Liz said.

"Morning Liz. Kurisu said that he had something he wanted me to look at?" Jonasan asked as he entered their apartment.

Kurisu and Liz had a rather spacious apartment with an open floor plan. The kitchen had natural wood cabinets, dark granite countertops, and tile floor. In the living room, he had a 70-inch flat-screen TV, a mahogany desk with a top of the line computer and two projecting monitors. A La-Z-Boy chair sat in the corner and a large couch sat centered on the TV. The walls were a deep red while the floors were an ocean blue.

"Mmmmh. So, you want some breakfast?"

"Sorry Liz, I already ate. Maybe next time."

Kurisu was in the dining room, which had a large oak table able to seat twelve people. Jonasan took a seat across from him.

"So, I heard you had something you needed me to look at?"

"Yup." Kurisu said as he pulled out a metal briefcase. "We found this at our doorstep, the only thing attached to it was a note that said 'apologies'. You got any idea what this might be?" Kurisu opened the case.

It was a weapon. It was pitch black with the barrel split with a noticeable gap between the top and the bottom of the barrel. Several lines were cut into the barrel near the gap, a virtual scope was attached to the top of the weapon.

"Jade… is this what I think it is?" Jonasan asked staring at the weapon.

_If you think it's a ZR-6458 MK V Handheld Railgun from the Wreatoseon Empire, then yes it is._

"How in the hell did this get here? One of these things costs 100 million credits to purchase."

"As I said, this was outside our door this morning." Kurisu said. "You said that it's a handheld railgun?

"Yeah, top of the line stuff. It was a few years from release when I left the territory of the empire. May I?"

"Of course."

Jonasan picked up the weapon and began to look it over. After several minutes of studying the railgun, Jonasan ran a scan, and then frowned and ran the scan again.

"Something wrong?" Liz asked.

"It's weak." Jonasan replied.

"Huh?" Kurisu replied.

"It's weak. While it does as much damage in test simulations as it did during the tech demo that I went to at its announcement but, its… lacking."

_Scans show that is not a fake but the power is not what was advertised._

"So is it good or what?"

"Oh it's a great weapon, don't get me wrong. The ZR-6458 MK V, or Zeus for short, can obliterate a target about half a mile away. But for what we are going to go up against, not the greatest."

"Can it be improved?" Kurisu asked.

Jonasan smirked. "Of course, dear brother. Just specify what you want to be done and hand it over."

"I want it to be able to channel my abilities into the weapon to make rods out of them. For example, if I channel lightning into it I want to be able to fire a rod of lightning."

"Alright, can do." Jonasan said as Kurisu placed the weapon back in the case and handed it to Jonasan.

Kurisu placed the railgun back into its case and handed it to Jonasan. Jonasan casually threw the case into his dimensional storage and grabbed Kurisu's arm and headed toward the door.

"Come on Kurisu, we have things to do." Jonasan said.

"Like what?" Kurisu asked.

"Testing."

"Oh right, that."

"We'll be back later Liz!" Jonasan shouted as he closed the door.

…

"Ok, this should be far enough out for your destructive tendencies." Jonasan said.

The two were in the middle of a clearing in a forest. The walls of Gran Crevasse could barely be seen in the distance.

"I'm not that bad. I'm a bit destructive, sure, but don't you think going 10 miles away from Gran Crevasse a bit much?"

"Kurisu, remember that you're a god now."

"And?"

"Kurisu, with achieving divinity your power has increased exponentially. So, you're a lot stronger than what you think you are."

"Surely it's not that much."

Jonasan sighed. "Kurisu, use a Class 3 Fireball on that tree over there."

Kurisu cast the spell without much thought, and a blue magic circle appeared in Kurisu's palm which he had pointed at the tree. For most spell casters, Jonasan included, when a Class 3 Fireball spell was used a 5-foot ball of fire shot out from the circle and struck the target. This is not what happened when Kurisu fired the spell. A 15-foot ball of flaming destruction came roaring out of the circle and obliterated the tree as well as several others around it as well as lighting several other trees around it. Jonasan quickly cast a Class 5 Water Beam to extinguish the fire. Kurisu looked shocked.

"That's what I'm talking about. That was a Class 3 spell, but it had the power of a Class 7."

"I see." Kurisu replied slowly.

"But let's shelve that thought for now and test something else first."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Knowledge's message from yesterday." Jonasan replied. "'Not all blades are the same as they once were.'"

"What does that even mean?"

"Give me a minute to think about it."

Jonasan began pacing while turning the phrase over in his mind, after a few minutes Jonasan snapped his fingers.

"I got it!" Jonasan said as he turned to face Kurisu. "You use a pair of twin katanas, right?"

"Yeah?"

"One of your swords has changed, most likely one has changed into a god weapon. Try summoning your katanas."

Kurisu shrugged his shoulders and did as Jonasan asked. The result was Kurisu's two katanas, completely unchanged.

"Huh? Do they feel any different?" Jonasan asked.

Kurisu gave his katana's a few practice swings. "The right one feels a bit heavy but otherwise they feel the same."

"Can I see the right one please?"

Kurisu handed the weapon over and Jonasan pulled out a table and placed the blade on it.

"How…"

"Dimensional Storage, similar to your shadow storage."

Jonasan ran several scans over the katana before handing it back to Kurisu.

"Flood it with temporal energy." Jonasan said.

"Why would I do that?"

"The material composition of the katana has changed, making it similar to a god weapon. It's just missing a magical catalyst, something to trigger the change to a god weapon as well as bind the weapon to you. Since you are a god of time, flooding it with temporal energy should activate the change."

"What happens if I use one of the other elements?"

"Nothing, it would still stay the same katana.

"Alright let's give this a shot."

Kurisu began to channel temporal energy into the Katana the blade began to glow blue. It steadily increased in brightness before the blade shattered.

"Jonasan! What the hell!?"

"Give it a minute." Was Jonasan's response as he carefully watched the various shards of the sword.

After about 30 seconds, the various shards began to glow and float off the ground. The shards then flew in front of Kurisu and began to form a new weapon. It was a double-edged, hand and a half broadsword. The edges of the sword were a bright white with the sword being split in the middle. The core of the weapon was made up of an endless amount of constantly moving gears. Near the guard of the weapon was a clock embedded into the sword. It had an upward crescent guard with three red gems embedded into the hilt. The pommel of the broadsword was in the shape of a gear with another red gem embedded in the center of it.

As the broadsword was being made, a large golden clock fazed into existence behind Kurisu. The clock was 8ft in diameter, the face and hands of the clock were gold with the Roman numerals that indicated the hours were a solid black. Behind the clock, Jonasan could see an untold amount of clockwork gears that eventually faded into the blue background of another dimension. As the sword was being made, the clock was rapidly ticking. Upon its completion, the clock gave a loud *Dong!* and the hands halted on the 12-hour mark.

"The Clock of Eternity." Jonasan said in awe.

Kurisu looked behind him and whistled appreciatively. As the Clock of Eternity faded away, Jonasan spoke.

"You've got a lot more power than I expect you to have Kurisu, if your able to summon that thing." Jonasan said quietly.

"I'm the god of time Jonasan, comes with the territory." Kurisu replied as he turned his attention to the blade before him that was slightly embedded in the ground.

"What will you name it? Every good weapon must have a name." Jonasan said.

As Kurisu studied the weapon, a name sprung to his lips, unbidden.

"Renzoku. I name you Renzoku." Kurisu said raising the sword.

The broadsword glowed blue for a moment before letting out a small shockwave.

"That's a god weapon alright." Jonasan said as sweat began to appear on his forehead.

"What makes you say that?" Kurisu asked as he turned towards Jonasan. "Hey, are you alright?" He noticed that Jonasan was sweating.

"The magical pressure its exerting is a dead giveaway." Jonasan said as he began to pale. "And no, I'm not alright. You might want to call Havana." Jonasan then dropped.

"Jade?"

_I'm on it._

Kurisu moved Jonasan into the shade of a nearby tree. Just as Kurisu was wondering whether to move Jonasan further inside the tree line, in order to shade him a bit more, the tree moved on its own. Kurisu looked up in confusion and saw that the truck of the tree had a face carved into it. With a start, Kurisu realized that the tree was an Ent. The Ent's branches creaked and groaned, clearly the Ent was asking the question but Kurisu didn't speak Ent.

"My apologies, Ent, but I can't understand you." Kurisu said.

The Ent gave its version of a shrug as if it didn't mind and continued to shade the two. Havana arrived 10 minutes later with a peculiar mode of travel.

"Havana," Kurisu said slowly. "How did you convince Alpha to let you ride him?"

"_I offered."_ Alpha responded. _"I could tell she was in a rush to get to a packmate. So, I offered to get her there faster."_

This raised many question marks in Kurisu's mind, but he decided to leave them be for now.

"Kurisu, what happened?" Havana asked as she opened her medical kit.

"I'm not totally sure, to be honest." Kurisu said, rubbing the back of his head. "I had just named my new sword and was discussing with Jonasan about how he was sure that it was a god weapon when he mentioned something about pressure and then suddenly dropped."

"Can you summon your weapon again?"

"Sure." Kurisu said as he summoned Renzoku.

After staring at it for several seconds Havana nodded and asked Kurisu to put the weapon away.

"I see what happened. You aren't aware of this Kurisu because you haven't spent enough time around the gods but, divine weapons emit a magical pressure on their surroundings. To those are unused to the pressure, it can make them collapse like Jonasan has."

"But he's around Luck and Misfortune all the time, shouldn't that have made him adjust to the pressure?"

"No. Nobody has seen what the fortune duo's divine weapon is, if they have one at all, so the amount of pressure that he's been exposed to is relatively low so it's not surprising that he was overwhelmed."

"Is there any way to get him used to the kind of pressure my sword exerts?"

"Nothing besides repeated exposure."

"Ok then. So, when will he wake up?"

"In a few minutes, now that your sword is put away."

True to her word, a few minutes later Jonasan woke up, with a pounding head.

"Oh Misfortune, my head. What did I do to upset you, my lady?" Jonasan moaned.

Jonasan felt a flask being pressed into his hand and he drank its contents without a second thought and promptly made a face at the taste.

"Yuck. Although not the most terrible thing I've taken." Jonasan said as his headache began to fade. "You need to add something to disguise the taste."

"It's a healing potion to up your regeneration. It's supposed to work, not taste good." Havana replied.

"They can be, but that's a discussion for another time." Jonasan said as he stood up. "Thank you, Havana."

"Anytime."

"Kurisu, pull out Renzoku again. I need to look at something."

"You are going to drop again." Havana warned. "Your body isn't used to the pressure of a divine weapon."

"I have a solution for that, don't worry." Jonasan said as a spell circle appeared above him. "Barrier: Class 6."

Two white dome barriers appeared over Jonasan. "There, problem solved. Now bring out the sword."

Kurisu sighed in annoyance but did as he asked. The moment that Kurisu summoned Renzoku, Jonasan's outer shield bowed dangerously but still held. Jonasan made note of it and started studying Renzoku, specifically the hilt and pommel.

"Kurisu," Jonasan said slowly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that Crimsonite?"

Kurisu looked at the sword. "huh, it is Crimsonite. The hell?"

"What is Crimsonite?" Havana asked.

Jonasan switched into lecture mode. "Crimsonite is a gem that looks similar to ruby. The difference comes in the crystalline structure of the two gems. Crimsonite has a crystalline structure that is conducive to storing and releasing mana. Nobody knows why, although it was theorized by some scientists that the gems were infused by wild magic at some point in their formation. Crimsonite was generally used in magic studies or used to power large magical spells or constructs."

"Are there any deposits around here?" Havana asked, this Crimsonite could be a game-changer on the battlefield.

Jonasan frowned. "Unfortunately, Crimsonite is no longer a native earth mineral. Deposits were already in short supply when we were born and the last of the deposits were mined out during my and Kurisu's natural lifetimes, 4.5 millennia ago. And if the part about wild magic is true, it can't be made either as wild magic is an extremely rare occurrence."

"I see. Unfortunate. Well, do you guys need me for anything else?"

"I think we're good Havana, Alpha do you mind taking her back?" Kurisu asked.

"_Of course, master."_

Havana climbed on Alpha's back and the two departed.

"Once I can withstand the pressure of Renzoku without the shields I'll put some Class 10 healing spells in the upper 3, I'll leave the bottom one for you to fill with whatever." Jonasan said.

"Alright then." Kurisu said as he put his weapon away. "Now, Jonasan, can you address the Ent behind you."

"Huh?"

Jonasan turned around and saw the Ent that was shading him. "Oh hi."

The two had a brief conversation before Jonasan turned backed to Kurisu.

"He merely asks that we keep the damage to a minimum when we are testing."

"Alright then. Can we start testing things now?"

"Absolutely. Just let me get a pen and paper." Jonasan began rummaging through his Dimensional Storage.

"What do you need a pen and paper for?" Kurisu asked.

"All of the God and Goddesses abilities are logged within the Book of the Gods in the Grand Library within the Council Hall. As a new god, you need to have yours logged too."

"But we aren't sure that my power has completely settled yet, it could change. I also don't like the thought of my enemies being able to look up what I can do in a book."

"If your abilities change, I will make sure to make note of it. Also, the Book of the Gods is kept under lock and key with Knowledge and is only consulted in extreme emergencies. It's not like Lucifer can just walk up to the book and look up what you can do." Jonasan replied, finally get set up.

"Fine, let's get this started then."

"Alright then, let's start with Umbrakinesis."

…

**Excerpt from The Book of the Gods by Knowledge**

The following description is of the power set of Kurisu, the Lord of Time, by Jonasan, Chosen of Luck and Misfortune and The Wandering Traveler. Do note that the following information does not reflect Kurisu's complete abilities as his powers and skills are still developing.

Elemental abilities

Fire:

Fireball- Can create a ball of fire varying in size as well as strength depending on how much power he puts into it.

Fire Devil- Can create and control a Fire Tornado. Note: Maximum strength is still undetermined.

Dragon's Breath- Able to breathe out a line of fine, length is determined by strength of inhale.

Water:

Tsunami- Can create a 40 by 30-foot wall of water that can travel 100 feet. Note: Nearby body of water not necessary as he can pull water from the molecules in the air, Tsunami is stronger if on or nearby a body of water

Jet of Steam- Can fire a line of superheated water at a target up to 20 feet away. Note: Exact damage to target is currently unknown.

Extract Water Elemental- Devastating ability that can draw every ounce of water from the target's body, leading to a slow and most likely painful death. Water is then used to create a Water Elemental. (For details on Water Elemental, see Summons section.)

Earth:

Earthquake- Can create earthquakes of varying magnitude, also leads to the creation of fissures, devastating to local ecology. Note: Fissures close after earthquake ends although how is still unknown.

Giant's Wrath- After throwing a handful of earth at a target, thrown earth begins to collect rocks pebbles and other loose earth as it travels toward the target. Can reach to the size of a boulder if target is a sufficient distance away.

Wrack Earth- By slamming his foot into the ground, Kurisu can create a shockwave effect that forces spikes of stone approximately seven feet high out of the ground for up to 30 feet in front of him. Spikes will sink back into the ground 10 seconds after shockwave has passed.

Air:

Dragon Twister- By swinging Renzoku/Katana/bare hand, Kurisu can create two twisters that move in two different directions, up to 30 feet away in a zig-zag pattern. Note: strength of twisters is currently unknown.

Cyclonic Blast- Launches a twirling blast of air to knock back targets. Looks like a sideways tornado.

Lightning:

Lightning bolt- Spell that causes a large bolt of lighting to strike the target.

Ball of Lightning- Can create and fire up to six small balls of lightning. Can be combined to form one giant ball of lightning.

Chain Dragon Lightning- Can fire bolts of lightning from the palm or tips of his fingers that jump from target to target. Note: When fired from the tips of his fingers, lightning bolts look like eastern dragons. Reason is unclear.

Thunderdome- Kurisu can create a dome of lightning over a specified area, striking anything inside or anything foolish enough to enter. Can also be used for defensive purposes.

Photokinesis:

Light Beam- Kurisu can fire a 5-inch beam of light from the palm of his hand toward a target. Note: Can cause temporary blindness even if you are not the target.

Ghost Lantern- Glowing ball of light that illuminates a 12-foot circle around the person. Light level adjusts according to ambient light and cannot be seen by others.

Wrath of the Sun- Kurisu can create a flash of light around him which causes temporary blindness. Repeated exposure can cause permanent blindness.

Umbrakinesis:

Shadow Constructs- Physical objects created with shadow energy.

Shadow Storage- a pocket of folded space within the Shadow Realm used to store objects. Unlimited in size.

Shadow Portal- Portals that allow passage to and through the Shadow Realm. Note: This is a Reaper exclusive spell.

Shadow Concealment- Spell that allows Kurisu to be undetectable, including hiding from tracing spells.

Black Lightning- Shadow infused lightning spell. Note: Full strength is unknown.

Special:

Elemental Tornado- By combining all his elemental abilities, Kurisu can create a tornado of elemental abilities. Due to the elements colliding within the tornado, movement is extremely erratic.

Prime Elemental- Elemental summon that can create and control 3 of each elemental type. (For info on elementals see Summons section)

Harmonic Blast- Kurisu can combine Dark Beam and Light Beam to create a 3-foot beam of pure divine energy.

Summons

Elemental Beings- three-story-tall beings made of elemental energy that do devastating amounts of damage to targets. Kurisu can create up to 5 elementals at one time as well as 1 Prime Elemental which can command the other elementals

(**A/N:** It was easier to catalog it this way. Writing it all out added and additional 10k words making the chapter way too long.)

…

**Time skip: 1 week**

"Well, I believe that covers everything." Jonasan said as he finished writing down the final details in his notebook. "I'll give this to Knowledge next time I see him."

Kurisu, Jonasan, and Liz were at the testing site just as Kurisu finished the last of his abilities. The Ent had told them to keep the damage to a minimum but with some of Kurisu's powered up attacks that just wasn't possible, hence the area across the clearing from the Ent was pockmarked with craters, burned, scorched, poisoned, soaked, ripped up and very much uninhabitable. The Ent, however, still considered the damage to minimal, despite the fact it could now see to the outside of the forest, and simply waved off any apologies.

"At least I know what has changed with my ascension, which is quite a bit it seems."

"And you," Liz said as she glared at Jonasan. "Are to tell me when you do something like this again. You are damn lucky I stopped Kurisu from firing that attack at you. I'm built for taking attacks like that, you aren't."

Jonasan just shrugged. "I would have survived, probably."

"That's not the point!" Liz shouted.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" A voice said.

"Oh, Creator damn it, not you." Jonasan groaned, pinching his nose.

The voice belonged to a 5'11'' brunette that was walking into the clearing. The brunette was an elf, the long pointy ears being a dead giveaway, he wore predominately green druid clothing with a bow slung across his back and a Livingwood staff with a large emerald embedded in the top in his hand.

The elf chuckled. "What? Aren't you happy to see me?"

"Not in the least, TreeHugger. You have been the biggest thorn in my side since I met you."

"Why thank you, Gypsy."

Jonasan growled.

"Jonasan, who is this?" Liz asked.

"*sigh* Kurisu, Liz, meet Michael, Life's Chosen."

As soon as Michael heard their names the smile vanished off his face.

"Ice Queen and the Warrior Dog, two of Death's slaves. Who decided to let you out of your cages? You two are too bloodthirsty to be free." Michael said.

Kurisu stared at Michael.

"Got something to say Warrior Dog?"

"You are disturbingly similar to Alpha. How old is this guy Jonasan?"

"He's still young, about a Millennium."

"Ah," Liz said. "Still a _child_ then."

Michael bristled before spotting the damage to the surrounding landscape. An evil smile suddenly crossed his face.

Jonasan quickly connected the dots and figured out what was about to happen.

"Michael! Don't you dare-"

"LADY LIFE! I FOUND TWO REAPERS TRYING TO UNDO ALL YOUR HARD WORK!" Michael shouted.

"Shit."

Green energy began to collect in the clearing as roots began to sprout out of the ground and form the framework for a portal. The green energy then flowed into the framework, igniting the portal. A moment later, someone walked through.

"_Is that so? Well, I'll just have to deal with them personally."_

Lady Life had walked through the portal, and she was armed for battle.

…

Code 098: *looks over to see Misfortune muttering to herself* You wouldn't happen to be planning my demise, would you?

Misfortune: No, simply thinking about what I'm going to do to Life if she lays a hand on our Chosen.

Code 089: *Flips page of notes for next chapter and pales* Oh boy, this isn't going to end well.

Misfortune: Did you say something, author?

Code 089: Nope!

*Earth enters from the right*

Earth: Oi, author. Do you happen to know a lady named Esdeath? Long blue hair, ice manipulator?

Code 089: *pales* Why?

Earth: Because she's looking for you.

Code 089: Please tell me you didn't let her in here.

Earth: No.

Code 089: Good. Don't. I really don't want to be near that psychopath.

Earth: Ok, but she seemed really determined to find you. *leaves*

Code 089: Misfortune? I might need to pay for some protection services.

Misfortune: Ok.

*Extremely distant creaking of a door and heels tapping on the floor*

Code 089: None of the Goddesses wear heels. *Realization* Misfortune! We need to leave, now!

Misfortune: Well then get moving.

Code 089: As always, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to roast marshmallows Ciao!

*sound of heels gets closer*

Code 089: Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! *Grabs Misfortune and runs through a door*

* * *

Does anyone want to guess what I've been watching recently?


	7. Chapter 6: Kidnapping

Darling in the FranXX: God's Rising

Chapter 6: Kidnapping

_And so, the Creator set the universe into motion and he was pleased. But the universe he created felt empty, thus the Creator set upon his next task. Create a being to fill his new universe with life. _-Excerpt from The Book of the Gods

…

"_It's always Death and his slaves that interfere with my work."_ Life said as she narrowed her eyes at Kurisu and Liz. _"The universe would be much better off if he was still stuck in that wretched realm of his and all you Reapers were dead."_

"Life, you know as well as I do that Death is necessary for the smooth operation of the universe." Jonasan said.

"_That may be, but the souls of the dead go to that realm automatically, there is no need for him to leave there to collect them or take humans as slaves to do the work for him."_ Life responded coolly, the relationship between the two could be considered equitable, if a bit chilly.

"Besides, all those Reapers are good for is destroying all my lady's hard work. Look at all the damage they caused, and you helped them too Gypsy!" Michael said.

"Michael, unless you want to know what it feels like to be atomized, I suggest you shut up." Jonasan growled, placing his hands on Joy and Sorrow.

"Oh, like you could actually do that Gypsy."

"A lot has changed since we last fought tree hugger, keep talking and you'll find out how much."

"You say that we keep interfering with your work, yet what you consider to be work is in defiance of the Natural Laws." Liz growled.

"_I was tasked at the beginning of the universe to create life. I was within my right."_ Life said back.

"Bullshit." Kurisu said. "Those abominations were against the rules set by the Creator himself. The only reason you weren't the one locked up is because there were none left to verify Death's claim."

Breaking away from the insult fest he and Michael were having, Jonasan spoke.

"What were you trying to make, Life? No one ever seems to know what it was that got Death so angry."

"That's because no one ever saw them before master killed them." Liz said.

"_Silence. I was attempting to make a race of immortals to serve us so we wouldn't have to keep pulling from other species. The other gods and goddesses were saddened whenever their Chosen died or was tired of working for them, so I sought to create a species that were truly immortal as we were to alleviate the pain they were experiencing. I was nearly finished making them when Death showed up. And what did he do? He slaughtered them all and then struck out at me!"_

Liz saw that Life was trying to paint herself as the victim and decided to fill in the rest of the story.

"Life was modifying a species that already existed to make her so-called 'perfect species'. She can't just pick any species to modify to create what she wants, certain conditions have to be met for her to achieve what she wants and the conditions are extremely hard to achieve, making it nearly impossible to find a qualifying species. When master found out that she had found one of those qualifying species, he quickly went to the planet to kill them and prevent her from achieving her goal. After killing them, master had to do one last thing, destroy the planet the species appeared on. That way, Life couldn't just re-seed the planet with life and come back in a few dozen millennia and try again. As master was charging the energy necessary to destroy the planet, Life, who was away for a while, realized what he had done and tried to stop him. Master had to put the energy he was charging to destroy the planet into blocking Life's attack, and as you know, when two opposing forces meet, the results never end well. The resulting explosion annihilated a quarter of the galaxy the planet was in."

Life suddenly chuckled. _"But I have found another. Humanity, as it turns out, is another species that meets the criteria. Once Lucifer wins this war, I will convert humanity into the species I wanted to make. Michael is already in the process of converting, as soon as I gather enough energy, I will finish the process."_ Her eyes wandered over to Jonasan. _"I believe that you will be the next one Jonasan." _She gave him a sultry look. _"I will take what Luck denied me and make it mine."_

Jonasan blushed scarlet.

"That! That right there!" Liz shouted. "That is against the Natural Laws! There can be only one immortal race! And Gods and Goddess cannot be in a relationship with a Chosen!

"_I've had enough of you."_ Life growled.

Life shot a bolt of green energy out of her hands at Liz, point-blank. Liz's eyes widened as she realized that she wouldn't be able to doge in time. But to her horror, someone else took the hit for her.

*Boom*

Liz didn't even have time to react as she was violently shoved out of the way. She turned to look and see who pushed her and to her growing horror, it was Jonasan. Just as Liz was shoved out of the way, the bolt slammed into Jonasan, the force of the hit sending him flying. Jonasan slammed into the ground twice before sliding to a halt near the foot of the Ent, his body was convulsing violently.

"JONASAN!" Liz screamed as she ran over to where he landed.

Mildly concerned for her next toy's wellbeing, Life checked his aura, unnoticing of the black miasma that was beginning to surround Kurisu.

"_Hmm. He will be lucky if he survives that. Shame, I imagine he would've quite fun in bed."_

"What?" Michael asked.

"_You would have first go at me, of course."_ Life said absentmindedly._ "Still, I bet he is an absolute sub, he would be so much fun to play with."_

Life watched as some kind of ice drake appeared out of a frost portal and saw Liz load the still convulsing Jonasan onto its back before getting on herself and flying off. Life then heard the laughter.

"**HeHeHeHeHe~"**

Life turned back towards Kurisu, or what used to be Kurisu. A black miasma had covered most of his body, his hands were replaced with shadowy claws. A pair of large black horns were growing out of his head and a pair of leathery black shadow wings were beginning to form on his back. His eyes were blood red and his mouth was filled with razor-sharp teeth.

"**YoUr GoInG To ReGrEt ThAt"** 'Kurisu' said, his voice had a monstrous quality to it.

"_What the hell are you?!"_ Life asked in shock.

…

"Come on Storm, faster. We're losing him." Liz said.

With a huff, the ice drake, Storm, began flapping harder. Due to her ice affinity, Liz had two ice drakes at her disposal, Storm and Frost, they were curious creatures that she had found en route to her last assignment. Well, more accurately they found her. To this day she still wasn't sure what it was that attracted them to her but in instances like this, she was glad to have them. The trio were flying at a breakneck pace back to Gran Crevasse in the hopes that Havana, with her extensive medical knowledge, might be able to figure out what Life hit Jonasan with and counteract it.

As she approached the walls, Liz saw a blue streak blur past her heading toward the testing site. While Liz wasn't as in tune with Zenith as Kurisu and Jonasan were, judging by the speed at which several massive thunderheads were gathering, she was beyond pissed. That wasn't counting the unholy fury she could feel emanating behind her. In the unlikely scenario that Life managed to get away from Kurisu, Liz knew that Zenith would deal with her personally.

Storm suddenly banked right before diving, coming to a sudden stop in the parking lot of Havana's hospital, Mercy Gardens General Hospital. Liz hopped off Storm, thanked him for his hard work, grabbed Jonasan and ran inside. Storm gave one final glance at his fleeing master before opening a frost portal and walking inside.

"HAVANA!" Liz shouted and she sprinted through the door.

Not thirty seconds later, the door to the ER was thrown open as Havana and a team of medical professionals came walking into the lobby.

"What the hell happened?" Havana asked as the others took Jonasan from Liz and put him on a gurney and wheeled him back into the ER.

"Life and his own stupidity happened." Liz replied.

Havana immediately zeroed in on the Life part. "Where?" she growled.

Liz pointed out one of the windows in the lobby. In the distance, Havana could see a massive storm striking the area, several tornadoes were beginning to touch down in the area.

"Come with me."

Havana walked toward once of the seating areas while pulling up the emergency channel on her communicator.

"Emergency broadcast from Havana to all Reapers. Divine incursion detected. Target: Life. One victim. Location: North Northwest of Gran Crevasse. Area marked by mass of thunderclouds. One Reaper on site."

One minute later, Reaper's voice came across the communicator.

"Reaper Alpha responds. Enroute to assist."

"What did she hit him with?" Havana asked.

Not sure. It was a green bolt, approximately two fists in size. Once he finally hit the ground, he immediately started convulsing."

Havana paled and abruptly stood.

"I need to get to treating him now. This better not be what I think it is." Havana muttered the last bit as she walked away.

Approximately 5 minutes later, an explosion was heard in the parking lot and Misfortune came gliding through the door.

"_Where is he?"_ She growled.

"Havana just took him into the ER Madam Misfortune. We have to wait."

"_Just Misfortune is fine Liz. I'm not that big on formality."_ Misfortune said as she glided over to Liz and sat next to her. _"I'm going to fucking kill Life for this."_

Another fifteen minutes passed before Havana poked her head out of the ER doors and looked around before spotting Misfortune.

"Madam Misfortune, I need your counterpart and I need you to come with me."

Misfortune stood up and shifted to Lady Luck before walking through the door. Liz continued to wait and glanced out the window to her right. _Give her hell Kurisu._

…

**Meanwhile back with Kurisu**

(**Play Sentenced to Death by Colossal Trailer Music**)

"**KeKeKeKeKeKeKe~"**

'Kurisu' gave out a demented chuckle as he cracked his knuckles.

"W-what the hell are you?" Michael asked.

"**KeKeKeKeKe~ We ArE MaNy ThInGs, BuT PeRhApS ThE BeSt DeScRiPtIoN Is... YoUR ExCutTiOnEr!" **

'Kurisu' leaped at Michael, forcing him to dodge, 'Kurisu's' claws missing his face by inches. As 'Kurisu' landed behind Michael, Life shot another green bolt at him, but he casually swatted it aside.

"**ThAt'S NoT GoInG To WoRk On Us!"**

The sky rumbled as storm clouds began to gather above them, although neither party was paying any attention to that. 'Kurisu' lunged at Life who quickly dodged to the right, 'Kurisu's' claws raked through her dress as he passed by.

"_This must be something similar to the Consumed state that Death's slaves fall into on occasion."_ Life muttered as she looked at 'Kurisu'.

'Kurisu' chuckled. **"ThAt Is BuT A PaLe ImItAtIon Of OuRsElVeS. DiLuTeD AnD WeAk."**

Life and Michael fought the horror that Kurisu had become for several minutes while making little to no progress against him. Meanwhile, the storm continued to gather. The clouds became black as night as lightning began to arc through them ominously. The wind began to howl around the group as they continued to fight, *microbursts occurring around them, downing trees. Each party was unnoticing of the rising storm threat, until an ear-piercing shriek rendered the air, causing Life to pause.

"**DoN't GeT DiStRaCtEd Or YoU'lL DiE!"**

Life quickly dodged yet another attack from 'Kurisu' and then looked around for what made the noise. Not seeing anything Life was about to strike at Kurisu again when the hairs on her arms began to stand up and the air began to smell of ozone.

*Boom*

Life screamed as she was struck by lightning, 1 million megajoules (300kV) flooding her nervous system as it made its way to the ground. If she wasn't a goddess, that could have very easily killed her.

"My Lady!" Michael shouted.

"_I'm fine Michael."_ Life said as she recovered.

The ozone smell returned again, and Life quickly moved just as another bolt of lightning struck where she was just standing.

"_Michael! Keep moving!"_ Life shouted as lightning began to rain down on the two of them as well as several trees in the area.

Life looked over to see if the lightning was striking that insect as well but to her shock, he was just standing there chuckling while staring above him. Life looked up to see what he was looking at and realized she had made a critical error. Flying above them was a massive bird, easily several stories tall with lighting arcing off her wings. Her eyes, now red with fury, were boring holes into her as she rained down lightning on the two. She had forgotten about the damn bird.

...

**With Luck**

"_What exactly do you need my help with Havana?" _Luck asked. _"Healing isn't exactly my forte."_

"We've run into a complication." Havana said with a grimace.

Luck's eyes narrowed. _"What kind of complication?"_

Havana shook her head. "I can't describe it. Hell, I can't even understand what I'm seeing. It's easier if you see for yourself."

The two walked in silence for a few more seconds until they reached the door to Jonasan's room. Havana pushed it open and Luck immediately realized what the "complication" was. Jonasan was floating just above the bed with what looked like a cloud around him. Lightning arced out of the cloud every few seconds as it randomly grounded itself.

"_Oh, dear. Havana, turn off every electrical device in this room unless you're willing to lose it, and everybody but you need to clear out."_

The medical professionals within the room all voiced their confusion but a quick word from Havana made them leave. Havana immediately set about shutting down the machinery but had to ask.

"Even the lights?"

"_Yes."_ Luck said as a ball of white light appeared in her palm before floating to the center of the room, acting as a miniature sun. _"I will use magic light to do this. Sister, I will need your help."_

Luck's right eye turned purple and Misfortune spoke. _"But of course."_

The Fortune duo cracked their knuckles as Havana shut off the lights and backed away. The duo began to glow a mixture of white and purple as several white and purple tendrils of energy began to extend off them and weave into the cloud around Jonasan. After several minutes of observing Havana asked.

"What are you doing?"

"_We are playing a game of, what do you humans call it? Minesweeper? Yes, Minesweeper." _Their voice was layered so Havana could hear both of them speak at the same time, Luck having a higher tone than Misfortune.

"Care to explain?"

"_Certainly. The cloud around our Chosen is a defensive ward, triggered when he is unconscious and close to dying. That cloud is containing a violent storm, if someone were to try to bring harm to him, the cloud would break and unleash the storm. Think of it like keeping a CAT 5 hurricane trapped in an extremely fragile bottle, the tiniest crack will unleash the whole thing. We are trying to weave our way into the bottle without breaking it."_

"This isn't what I expected at all." Havana muttered. "What did she hit him with? A First Melody?"

"_Close, but not quite. A First Melody wouldn't bring him this close to death, take him down for several weeks, certainly, but not this. Think stronger."_

"Stronger? What does she have that's stronger than First Melody?" Havana pondered for a few minutes before the answer hit her like a sledgehammer.

"She wouldn't dare." Havana said in horror.

"_The attack was meant for Liz. They are why she made the spell in the first place."_

"How is he still alive!?"

"_Part of the reason the ward triggered is because he has turned his attention inwards. He's burning massive amounts of mana to fight off the spell. It's an effective strategy, as long as he can supply the mana, he can keep it from destroying him. But it's like building an earthen wall to stop a flood, he's going to run out of mana and succumb eventually, but that's where we come in."_

"How so?"

The tendrils had finally made it through the cloud by taking some convoluted paths to reach Jonasan's body. The purple tendrils were replaced by white ones as Misfortune retreated, her job complete as Jonasan's body began to glow a soft white.

"_By giving him our mana, we can help him fend off the spell until it fades." _Luck said as she pulled up the nearest chair and sat down beside his bed.

"One last question."

"_Fire away."_

"Who gave him this defensive ward? I've never seen anything like it."

The building shook as thunder rolled through.

"_You'll find out soon enough."_

...

**With Reaper Alpha**

Reaper Alpha was making their way through the storm with difficulty. Several EF1 and EF2 tornados had touched down around them throwing debris and making the going difficult. The rain was not making matters any easier

"Raven, Crow, can you do anything about this storm? It's getting out of hand!" Reaper shouted over the howling wind.

"No can do Reaper." Crow shouted back.

"The storm is constantly getting stronger from an internal source; the storm isn't natural. And whatever spawned this thing has some serious power to back it up." Raven said.

Reaper looked up just as a bolt of lightning flashed through the clouds. In the distance, just above their target, Reaper saw what looked like a massive bird.

_What in Death's name was that?_

...

**With 'Kurisu'**

_That blasted bird was going to be a problem._ Life thought.

In all honesty, she had completely forgotten about damn the thing's existence. Nobody had seen one in centuries so she, along with everyone else, had thought she had faded into the Void along with the rest of her race. This was obviously wrong.

"_Michael, take care of the bird. I'll deal with this monstrosity." _

"Of course, my Lady. I'll deal with this wretched bird in no time."

Said bird screeched and sent a bolt of lightning at Michael.

"Impertinent creature! I will show you your place."

Michael began to cast various wind spells at Zenith in the hopes of forcing her to land, but Zenith was used to dealing with the erratic wind patterns that existed within storm clouds and expertly dodged them all. It was in the midst of this that Zenith successfully fired a bolt of lightning and hit Life.

"How dare you! How dare you strike your creator! Lady Life was the one that created your pathetic species! There will be punishment for hitting your creator once we bring you to heal."

The storm stopped. For a single moment, the wind was silent, the lightning ceased, and the rain stopped falling. The next moment, however, the storm increased in rage. Zenith gave an almighty shriek and ascended higher into the cloud layer, vanishing from sight. Michael began looking through the clouds trying to see where she went. He never stood a chance.

"Guh!"

*squelch* *splatter*

Two of Zenith's talons emerged through Michael's chest as she ran him through from behind.

"_Let me make one thing clear, hatchling." _Zenith growled. _"I am my own master. I. am beholden. to no one."_

Reaper Alpha arrived just in time to see Zenith casually throw Michael's body off to the side and land.

"What is that thing? Cypress asked.

"_MICHAEL!"_ Life shouted and ran over to his lifeless body.

Seeing Michael's death was enough to cause the black miasma to dispel from Kurisu, returning him to his normal form.

"You went too easy on him Zenith. I would have fried him until his body was nothing more than a blackened skeleton." Kurisu said.

"_I was tired of his presence, and his last statement warranted a swift death. Are you alright, child? You haven't been that far gone in a long time."_

Kurisu rolled his shoulders. "For the most part."

It was then that Kurisu and Zenith realized that Reaper Alpha was there. There was an awkward silence.

"You have some explaining to do." Reaper said as he looked at Zenith, who was studying them intently.

"_You. are. all. DEAD!"_ Life screamed and began to fire spell after spell at them.

"Oh no, you don't." Kurisu said while rotating his hand counterclockwise.

The fired spells rapidly began to slow to the point that they could easily walk around them.

"_What?!"_ Life exclaimed.

Zenith took off back into the storm as Kurisu rotated his hand clockwise and himself and Reaper Alpha vanished from sight.

"You can help me kill her if you want but stay out of my way." Kurisu said as several cuts began to appear on Life's body.

"_How are you doing this? Only the Creator can control time to this degree!"_ Life said.

"Until recently, yes." Kurisu said as he returned time to normal around himself. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Kurisu Arashi, the first human Rider of Lord Death and the new God of Time." The clock of eternity appeared behind Kurisu and began to tick as he made this proclamation.

It was then that Life realized that she was in deep trouble.

...

The angels that were manning the walls watched the distant storm with unease. They could feel the power that the storm was emanating but were unfamiliar with its creator.

"Hey, you don't think that's Water and Lightning's doing, do you?" One angel asked.

"Nah, it possesses too much power to be those two." Another replied.

"Well, whatever is creating that monster, I sure hope we don't have to fight it."

The angels were so distracted by the storm that they didn't notice 10 black beings slip through the walls. The beings were approximately human-sized with jet black scaly skin, they had glowing yellow eyes, foot-long horns on their heads and claws for hands. These were Shadow Demons; Lucifer's elite personal guard and they were here on a special mission.

"**Well, that was easy." **Four said.

"**Silence fool. We haven't gotten to the hardest part yet; we don't know what kind of security those Reapers set up." **Two replied.

The demons silently progressed through the city making their way to the outskirts on the opposite side of Gran Crevasse. Their objective? A certain Reaper Squad's children. It was a pretty ambitious plan by Lord Lucifer, but it was crazy enough to work.

"**Well, this is interesting." **Five said.

"**That is the horned one's home correct?"** Six asked.

"**The mission does not change. Lord Lucifer's orders are clear. If the horned female gets in the way, deal with her but leave her alive, Life needs every human she can get for the Conversion once this war is over."** One said.

The ten demons approached the door and One quietly began to open the door.

...

Alpha's head shot up from the floor and turned his gaze toward the door. The five of them had taken to hanging around the children of Reaper Alpha when Kurisu was not around, becoming like large house pets to the children. Alpha wasn't sure why they all just tended to gravitate toward the children when Kurisu wasn't around. Beta had proposed that it was because they were unable to have pups of their own. Although, the treats they received from the pink-haired-girl-with-horns were nice.

The children, as well as the girl, were behind them looking out the window at the storm on the horizon. Alpha and his pack were laying on the floor behind them arranged in a semicircle. What had drawn Alpha's attention was a particular scent, sulfur. Kurisu had told them to keep an eye out for this particular scent as it meant that demons were approaching, so he roused the rest of his pack.

"Alpha? What's wrong?" Amelia asked, unaware that Gythin was tensing on her shoulders and staring at the door.

Alpha and his pack gathered Reaper Alpha's children as well as Zero Two and her daughter into the corner, standing between them and the door. Gythin flew off of Amelia's shoulders and hovered just above Alpha's head, she knew that she couldn't do much, but she would do her best to help.

The front door began to slowly creak open and Alpha let out a low growl in response, his hackles raised. The door stopped opening only for a moment before continuing, stopping again just as it got halfway opened. A black claw appeared, gripping the door and Alpha let out a short bark, the last warning for the demons. Something chuckled darkly from the other side of the door causing Alpha and his pack to tense, each baring their teeth and growling at the door. The door was suddenly flung open and as a black something entered the room, Alpha leaped.

...

Life was in trouble and she knew it. Between that infuriating thunderbird, the group of Death's slaves and the stupidly overpowered Rider, she refused to believe that he was a god until she heard it from the Creator himself, she was losing. She was silently cursing the Shadow Demons for taking so long when she finally got a message from Lucifer.

"_Mission accomplished Life. Retreat at once, we are one step closer to victory."_

Life smiled, finally, she could get out of this disastrous situation. Just as she was about to open a portal, she found herself in quite the predicament. Kurisu had realized she was trying to escape and stopped time around her.

"Where do you think you're going?" Kurisu asked as he slowly approached her, Renzoku emitting an ominous ticking.

Kurisu's head suddenly snapped to the right as if he had heard something as Reaper's hand flew to an earpiece.

While Kurisu and the others were distracted, Zenith decided now was a good time to teach Life a lesson that she would not soon forget. The winds and rain stopped but the clouds above thickened, turning day into night. Reaper Alpha and Kurisu noted the changing weather conditions but simply stepped back and continued to deal with what they were hearing. Zenith landed in front of the time stopped Life and started to glow electric blue.

"_Let me make one thing clear Life."_ Zenith said as she glowed brighter and the air began to smell of ozone. _"I am FAR older and FAR more powerful than you will ever hope to be. You may have created all life in the universe, but I still predate you by a number of Giga-annums _(Billion years)._" _It was starting to become noticeably painful to stand in the vicinity of Zenith as small arcs of blue lightning began to jump through the air. _"And one more thing,"_ Zenith was glowing blinding bright and a loud humming could be heard. _"My children. Are. Off. Limits."_

Life screamed as she turned into a living lightning rod courtesy of Zenith. Lightning bolts packing several thousand amps arcing from Zenith as she became the personification of a tesla coil. Kurisu lost control of the time stop, the ability still being new to his arsenal, and Life collapsed to the ground still screaming as she was continually being struck; Zenith looking on without mercy. When the last lightning bolt finally dissipated, Life was quivering on the ground twitching from residual arcs, her dress and armor were scorched, some places burned off completely, leaving her in a disheveled state. Zenith gazed at Life's pathetic state before coldly flying off into the storm, leaving Kurisu and Reaper Alpha to decide her fate.

After Zenith flew off Kurisu slowly approached, his face reflecting cold fury. He and Reaper had finished their conversations about halfway through Zenith's little session, Reaper Alpha was livid and had ridden in fury back toward Gran Crevasse, leaving Kurisu to deal with Life.

"You know, I was having a really good day today." Kurisu started out. "I got to spend some quality time with my wife, learned that this was the last day of testing that we had to do, found out that my railgun's modifications were nearly complete, and got to blow or destroy several things. But then..." Kurisu paused. "... you showed up. You spoke down to me as if I was inferior, attempted to attack my wife, might have killed my brother, and attacked my person."

A ten ringed red spell circle appeared above Kurisu in the sky and slowly began to spin. The storm clouds began to turn crimson and it began to rain sparks and ash.

"And then, about halfway into beating your ass, I get a telepathic message. Its contents? That this was all a setup. All this was orchestrated just so Lucifer could grab 5 rather defenseless children and use them as blackmail material against Reaper Alpha. And to top it all off, they severely injured an ally of mine _and_ took her child as well."

Life whimpered. She absolutely _hated_ the fact that she was at the mercy of one of Death's slaves, but she knew when she was beaten, she just had to hope his punishment wasn't too severe.

Kurisu kept looking at Life coldly. "I believe that I have just discovered a new spell, and you will be my practice dummy. Do tell me what it's like on the inside."

The spell array above became a burning gold as the spell began to trigger.

"_Divine Class:" _Kurisu intoned.

Life weakly lifted her head to look into Kurisu's eyes to search for some measure of mercy, she found none.

"_Firestorm."_

Kurisu and Life were swallowed by a one-mile vortex of fire and ash. The heat could be felt all the way back at Gran Crevasse where the angels watched with awe. The firestorm raged for 10 straight minutes before finally dispersing. The land within the storm was burned black and it would be several years before life grew in the area again. Kurisu stood alone at the center of the scorch radius and stared dispassionately at where Life once kneeled before flying back toward Gran Crevasse. He knew that he didn't kill Life as you can't kill a god/goddess, but he had destroyed her corporal form, it would be several hundred years before she was back to her full strength.

...

**Time skip: 5 hours**

Kurisu was by himself in an empty room within the capitol. After verifying Zero Two's condition and being reassured by Luck multiple times that Jonasan would live, Kurisu went to Zero Two's home to see if he could ascertain where the children were taken to. Alpha and his pack, though badly injured, would be fine after a couple of days of rest. After scouring the scene from top to bottom as well as taking several pictures, Kurisu was no closer to knowing where they were taken as he was when he started. He gave Hiro the ok to clean up his home and relocated here, pouring over the photos searching for something he may have overlooked. Jade was even searching through satellite imagery to see if she could get any indication of a direction of travel, so far, nothing.

*Knock knock*

"Enter." Kurisu said, thinking it was Liz and was rather surprised to see Owl and Raven.

"Is there something you need?" Kurisu asked.

"We need to discuss what that bird was earlier. We would normally do this as a team, but the others aren't exactly... coherent, right now." Owl said.

This was a massive understatement. Most of Reaper Alpha had to be sedated to keep them from going off the rails, the only ones awake right now were Owl, Raven, and Havana. Kurisu sighed, he really didn't want to waste energy on this but knew this needed to be handled now while most everybody was out cold.

"What do you want to know?" Kurisu said with a sigh.

"What is she? Where did she come from? Who controls her? Is she a threat?" Raven asked.

Kurisu gave them the cliff notes version of who Zenith was and everything related to her while making sure to state that no, she was not a threat but an ally. After confirming the details, Owl and Raven left leaving Kurisu to look over the photos he had taken. Several hours passed and Kurisu was about to give up for the night.

*Smack*

Kurisu glanced up from the photos at the sound and found a letter sitting in front of him. He hadn't heard the door open, but it was possible that he had ignored it in favor of the photos. With a shrug, Kurisu opened the letter, inside was a sheet of paper with numbers on it and nothing else.

_37.836903, 139.930158_

"Jade?"

_Yes, Kurisu?_

"Can you enter Longitude, Latitude coordinates?"

_Yes. Have you found something?_

"Possibly. What's at these coordinates?" Kurisu rattled off the numbers to her.

_Give me a second._

There was a moment of silence before...

_What the...?_

"What is it, Jade?"

_There's something here but all I can see is a distortion on the satellites. None of the filters I have can get any better results. You're going to have to send someone there._

"I have a lead and that's all I need." Kurisu said as he began to pack the photos away, he would send out a lightning elemental in the morning.

...

**Earlier**

**Demon High Command 03**

Xegmizaun was staring into the cage containing the six captured children. Now, demonic expressions were difficult to make out but if one looked closely enough, they could spot shock on Xegmizaun's face.

"And you're sure this was Lord Lucifer's idea? Not one of the Elementals?"

"Positive General Xegmizaun." A warlord replied.

The warlord from the first chapter had done quite well for himself since the start of the war. After a surprise attack and subsequent annihilation of the Second Holy **Regiment by Xegmizaun and his ***company of demons, he was elevated to the rank of Archdemon and given the name Xegmixaun by Lucifer himself. With the same company, Xegmizaun proceeded to break several heavily fortified angelic entrenchments and forts along the Western Front in old America, giving them the moniker of the Lightbreakers. After getting trapped deep behind enemy lines with valuable intel, the Lightbreakers slaughtered their way through some of the best Heaven had to offer, including forcing a Seraph to retreat, to make their way back into friendly territory. For his outstanding leadership in the face of an overwhelming enemy threat, Xegmizaun was promoted to the rank of General. He and his company were then sent to the Eurasian Front, which had seen little to no progress in quite some time, and were charged with subduing the human threat.

Xegmizaun dismissed the warlord and made his way to his quarters. Shortly afterward, Xegmizaun's second in command appeared beside him.

"Lord Z, who are those humans in the cage?" His second asked.

"They are the children of the Riders, plus an extra." Xegmizaun responded.

"That's not good, the humans won't last long in demon company. Can we get them out?"

"Not without being seen. The humans and Riders will have to get them out."

"How? This place is Shifted, the humans will never be able to find this place in time, much less break the barrier."

"Then we will assist them in finding this place, and there is one among them who can break the barrier. Send a message to King informing him of these developments. Afterward, have our strongest caster send a message with the coordinates to one of the Reapers, it doesn't matter who. That should get them here in time."

"At once Lord Z." His second promptly scurried off.

Xegmizaun sighed and rubbed his forehead. With any luck, these events will finally tip King's favor and they could end this charade.

...

**Time skip: 1 day**

A primal lightning elemental touched down just outside the distortion area Jade spotted on the satellites. As Jonasan had discovered, the primal lightning elemental differed from the standard lightning elemental. It was twice the size of the other primal elementals and instead of being the electric yellow of a regular lightning elemental, it was electric blue and carried Zenith's symbol, a large bird surrounded by a diamond of blue electricity, on its left pectoral.

The elemental was carrying a camera that was streaming visuals back to the Defensive Operations room in Gran Crevasse where Reaper Alpha, Reaper Beta, Kurisu, Liz, Hachi, and Nana were in attendance. However, what they were seeing on screen was making no sense.

"Hachi, Nana, is something wrong with the camera?" Ichigo asked.

"No president." Hachi replied. "Both the camera and the video feed are working fine."

"Kurisu, are you getting anything different?" Havana asked.

Kurisu, who was watching through the eyes of the elemental, shook his head.

"Nope. Even I'm getting that strange distortion."

The entire area looked like they were looking at it through a blurry camera, odd ripples would wash through the area from time to time making the scene even more headache-inducing to look at. Kurisu heard a quiet "Oh no." from Jade.

"Jade? What is this?" Kurisu asked.

_It's a Shifted area and I'm sorry to say it but you're going to have to wait until my master wakes up before you can get in there. Nothing you can do is going to crack that._

"What is a Shifted area Jade?" Reaper asked, voice tight.

_A Shifted area is a micro or sub reality. They are artificial realities that exist in defiance of our own and whoever made the reality has absolute control of the rules within the reality. These things are very dangerous as they can cause the potential collapse of our own reality. Jonasan and the Fortune duo are the only two beings that know how to destabilize the reality and since the Fortune duo chose neutrality, you're going to have to wait until Jonasan wakes up._

"Do we have any idea when he is going to wake up?" Hiro asked, he was very worried over both Zero Two, who had finally awoken, and the safety of his daughter.

Havana shook her head. "With the spell that hit him there is no way to tell, we have to let the spell run its course before he will awaken."

"Do we have an estimate?"

Havana thought about it for a moment. "A week and a half to two weeks, maybe."

Reaper was not happy.

...

*Camera pans to show Misfortune being restrained by Will and Emotion before panning back to show life collapsed beside 089's desk*

Will: Lass, as much as I know that you'd like to you can't remove her from existence!

Misfortune: SHE NEARLY KILLED MY CHOSEN! SHE DESERVES TO DIE!

Will:*Forcefully drags Misfortune through a door*

Emotion:*Flies over to 089's desk* We'll work on calming her down, just keep an eye on Life, would you? *Flies after Will*

Code 089: It's not like she's going to go anywhere.

*Code 089 glances to the right before moving his chair a little more to the left. The camera pans to show a bound and gagged Esdeath glaring holes into him*

Code 089: I don't know how you got in here but once Knowledge and Earth get here, I'm going to remove your knowledge of both me and my Nexus before throwing you out. I don't need a psychopath like you here, these guys are enough.

Esdeath: *mumbles something behind the gag*

Code 089: Don't care. Anyways, reviews and criticism are greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to burn COVID-19. Ciao!

Esdeath: *starts trying to get out of her bonds*

Code 089: *sweats nervously* Earth, hurry the hell up.

*A microburst is a downdraft in a thunderstorm that is less than 2.5 miles in scale. Although microbursts are not as widely recognized as tornadoes, they can cause comparable, and in some cases, worse damage than some tornadoes produce.

**A regiment consists of at least 2 battalions or 1200 to 2000 soldiers.

***A company is a military unit that consists of 80-150 soldiers.


	8. Chapter 7: Travel

Darling in the FranXX: Gods Rising

Chapter 7: Travel

**Gran Crevasse**

**Location: Hospital**

It took two weeks for Jonasan to wake up, two weeks too long for Reaper Alpha and Beta. Reaper had to be sedated multiple times in order to prevent him from shifting into the Consumed state. Despite Jade's warnings that it would not work, Reaper Alpha and Kurisu wanted to try and see if their attacks would break through the reality barrier. Despite their best attempts, the barrier refused to yield, and they had no choice but to wait for Jonasan to wake up, much to Kurisu's annoyance.

When Jonasan finally came to, he felt like a destroyer had dropped on his head, something he, unfortunately, had personal experience from. However, given the amount of power behind the attack, that was probably close to accurate.

"Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooow, did anyone get the registration of the ship that hit me?"

"_It wasn't a ship that hit you but Kurisu did yes."_ A voice replied.

Jonasan opened his eyes and realized that he was in a hospital, the beeping of a heart rate monitor was heard off to his right. Jonasan turned his head toward where he heard the voice and saw an exhausted Madam Misfortune.

"My Lady?" Jonasan asked uncertainly, usually whenever he ended up injured enough to go to a hospital it was Luck that he woke up to.

"_It is good to see you awake again our Chosen. We were beginning to get extremely worried."_

"I don't mean to sound rude Misfortune but, what happened to Luck?"

"_There is no need to apologize our love, we appreciate the concern. Luck is simply resting; it had taken all of her energy and most of mine to keep you alive these past few weeks."_

"Weeks?" Jonasan asked in confusion. "I knew I got hit with something nasty but strong enough to take me down for that long? What did she hit me with?"

"_She hit you with a Divine Class Life Song."_ Misfortune replied. _"Without our intervention, you would have died."_

Jonasan paled when she said this, and for good reason. Life Song was Life's trump card, a very powerful and very dangerous spell. One that was hyper lethal to both the Chosen and Death's Riders. The spell bypassed the physical body and assaulted the soul directly with primordial energy, anything not a divine entity would fall under the assault and their soul would be destroyed.

The spell was made for one purpose, to permanently kill Death's Riders. Without a soul, Death couldn't bring his Riders back from the dead when they fell, thus greatly weakening his strength. Life used this spell to great and terrible effect during the last Great War and was responsible for killing 3/4 of Death's Riders at the time, the remaining quarter being slain by Lucifer, thus causing Death to choose a new species to select his Riders from.

Misfortune brushed a stray hair out of Jonasan's face. _"There is no need to panic our love, we have kept you alive and that is all that matters to us."_

Misfortune then stood up from her chair and climbed into the bed with Jonasan, setting him into a bit of a panic.

"Misfortune, what are you doing!?" Jonasan whisper shouted.

Misfortune flicked her hand towards the light switch and the already dim lights in the room turned off. She then snuggled into Jonasan's chest.

"_As we said earlier, we have used most of our energy to keep you alive, so we need to rest."_

"But, Misfortune I could..."

"_I don't care." _Misfortune snapped. _"I am tired, and this is the closest bed. Now hold me."_

Jonasan sighed and wrapped his arms around Misfortune, making sure to keep his hands away from dangerous places. Misfortune sighed and grabbed his left arm and placed it on her right breast before letting out a moan of contentment. Jonasan internally panicked again and tried to jerk his arm back to where it was but Misfortune locked it in place with her hand.

"Misfortune!"

"_Relax our love. Our body is yours to do as you please, intimacy is expected and welcomed. We know that you like our form and are nervous about getting caught but we are getting impatient. Touch us, tease our body mercilessly, bring us so close that we beg you for release, ravish us, we do not care. But do not leave us waiting or we will move first and damn the consequences. We have waited for 4 millennia but we won't wait much longer. We have needs and we will fulfill them, one way or another. Enjoy us and deal with the consequences later."_

With that not so subtle threat in mind, Jonasan quit trying to move his hand, and Misfortune relaxed.

"_That's better. Don't hesitate to feel us up whenever you like; in public, in private, we don't care. This will do for tonight unless you want to go further."_ Misfortune paused and waited for an answer. When none came, she mentally sighed at the missed opportunity but continued. _"Then rest our love, you will have a long day ahead of you tomorrow._

...

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Was the first thing that Jonasan woke up to the next morning.

Apparently, at some point during the night Misfortune changed into a loose purple Kimono and had put his hand on top of her breast under her clothing. Couple that with the fact that Misfortune was laying in bed with him to begin with, and it looks bad no matter how you look at it. This is what Havana stumbled upon when she came in to check up on Jonasan in the morning.

"Get your hands off of her!" Havana shouted as she marched over to forcefully remove Misfortune from the bed.

In situations like this, it is always assumed that the Chosen initiated contact and not the God/Goddess, because, why would they take interest in a mortal?

"Havana, don't you dare touch her. I can't move my hand because she still has a grip on it, give me a minute to get out of it." Jonasan said.

With his right hand, Jonasan lightly pinched a spot on Misfortune's neck, just to the right of the jugular, causing Misfortune to shudder and relax her grip on his arm, freeing him. Jonasan quickly got up from the bed before suddenly being smacked by a wave of nausea, nearly causing him to fall to the floor.

"Jade, help." Jonasan said as he fought the urge to vomit.

_On it._

Jade quickly instructed the nanobots to inject small amounts of carbonic acid and high fructose corn syrup mixture into his system, Jonasan recovered a few seconds later.

"Thank you, Jade."

_You're welcome_

Jonasan suddenly found himself slammed into a wall and found himself on the business end of Havana's scythe.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't decapitate you where you stand for violating a goddess." Havana threatened.

"_Because if you do, your entire bloodline will experience and unfortunate accident at age 30." _A tired, pissed off voice replied.

Turning around, Havana saw that Misfortune had awoken. Her silky purple hair was a mess, her Kimono was barely keeping her from looking indecent and she was glaring at Havana through tired eyes.

"_I was enjoying sleeping with my Chosen Havana." _Misfortune spat.

"That is not allowed Misfortune and you know it."

"_Silence mortal. I am tired and you woke me up from my restful sleep. Don't continue to annoy me."_

Misfortune then walked over to Jonasan.

"_I appreciate the wake-up call but..."_

Misfortune crowed Jonasan into the wall before kissing him full on the lips, with Havana standing there gaping at her.

"_...not so hard next time. Or I will make you finish what you started." _Misfortune whispered that last part in his ear before turning to Havana.

"_My threat stands Havana, kill him or report him to the Creator and none of your family will live past 30."_

Then, she was gone. Off to the Council Chamber to rest and recuperate. Jonasan blinked a couple of times before shaking his head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

Havana gave Jonasan a wary look. "Do I want to know what you did to make her let go?"

"Unproven facet of biology that Luck showed me." Jonasan said as he thought about just how he found out about that particular fact/fetish, he still wasn't sure which it was.

"Okaaaaay. Just going to end that line of thought there." Havana said.

"Good. Now, where are my clothes and weaponry, and what happened while I was out?"

_If you don't mind Havana, I'll fill him in if you go get his clothing and weapons. _

"I can tell him thank you." Havana said annoyed.

_Without devolving into rage-fueled hysterics? I think not._

Havana grumbled but conceded the point and walked out of the room to fetch Jonasan's items.

By the time Havana returned, Jade had filled Jonasan in on what had transpired and was projecting an aerial view of the Shifted area onto the wall.

"Jade, I'm going to need you to pull Complex 57 out of hyperloop orbit and move it into position over those coordinates."

_On it._

Jonasan then noticed that Havana returned. "Ah thank you, Havana. This will take just a minute, wait there." Jonasan then went into the bathroom and changed into his clothing.

"Who all is going with us?" Jonasan asked as he emerged.

"Us, of course, Kurisu, Liz, and yourself. Reaper Beta wants to go as well seeing as they grabbed Zero Two's daughter as well, but they will be more of a hindrance than a help." Havana replied.

Jonasan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Not necessarily. Those mechs that they used to pilot, the FranXX, are they..."

"No, Jonasan." Havana quickly cut him off. "They are inoperable, and even if they were, we would never allow them to pilot them again. Too much risk of injury."

"Is that so?" Jonasan said still thinking. "Have everyone that's going meet me outside the city in an hour. I need to ask something of Knowledge."

...

An hour later, Kurisu, Liz, Reaper Alpha were outside the city waiting on Jonasan. Kurisu was preparing for a long flight, most of Reaper Alpha was working on putting a saddle on Draco, Draco and Zenith, who was to be Liz's ride, were discussing the finer points of air travel over long distances in a mixture of Avian and Draconic, and Reaper was explaining, yet again, why Reaper Beta can't go.

"I've told you guys, you have no combat experience outside your FranXX, and even if you did, I still wouldn't let you go as you have no weaponry that's effective against demons." Reaper said.

"As much as I hate to say this, there is also the fact that you guys are still mortals. You aren't as resistant to damage and injury as we are, we don't want you getting hurt. You guys have your hands' full keeping the other ex-parasites operational. Let us do some work for once." Liz said.

"They took my daughter Reaper!" Zero Two shouted. "Darling and I are not going to stay behind while she's in danger!"

"We can help Reaper, let us help." Ichigo said.

Reaper sighed and was about to explain again when someone interrupted.

"Ah good, everyone is here." Jonasan said as he approached, Knowledge appearing beside him.

"Took you long enough." Raven said.

"Had something to take care of." Jonasan replied. "Reaper, they're going with us."

"What?! Jonasan they are not prepared nor equipped for this!" Reaper protested.

"I've got a plan for that. Knowledge, if you will."

"_I need the cores and materials." _Knowledge responded.

With a wave of Jonasan's hand, two portals appeared about 300 feet away. One dropped several tons of Angelic Metal ingots and the other dropped 5 large cores.

"There you go. 30 Metric Tons (30,000 Kilograms or 66,138.679 lb) of Angelic Metal ingots and five FranXX cores."

"Jonasan..." Havana growled. "Why do you have 5 FranXX cores?"

Jonasan glared at her. "Giving them the ability to help." He jerked his thumb at Reaper Beta.

While this was going on, Knowledge was getting to work. He flew over to the two stacks and opened his book, flipped a few pages before reading for a bit. While he was still reading, he waved his hand and the metal began to liquefy, with another wave the 5 cores began to float, and the liquefied metal flowed to surround the cores and began to make 5 familiar shapes.

"Are those..." Miku said quietly.

Jonasan nodded. "They are. Knowledge knows how to do and build everything, including building complex structures like the FranXX."

Once Knowledge completed his work, 5 FranXX stood in front of the group; Strelitzia, Chlorophytum, Genista, Delphinium, and Argentea. The FranXX was a lot shorter than the original, a FranXX originally was *10 stories tall, the new ones were 3 stories tall. Knowledge flew back over.

"_Five fully rebuilt FranXX. Rebuilt and composed entirely out of Angelic Metal to allow for demon-slaying. The fuel cores were replaced with quantum entangled probability matrixes and are entirely self-fueled. The FranXX are designed to be piloted by two people, one male, and one female with a third seat for your original FranXX personal assistants. In all, rebuilt like the originals but without the detrimental side effects."_

Jonasan turned to Reaper with a smug smirk on his face. "Will you stop them now?"

Reaper glanced over at Reaper Beta before facepalming. "I hate you sometimes. You know that?"

"I've been told that from time to time." Jonasan said as Reaper Beta made their way to the rebuilt FranXX while calling their respective androids.

"Is everybody ready now?" Kurisu asked.

Reaper Alpha was loaded onto Draco, Reaper Beta was settled into the FranXX, Kurisu was already in the air. The only one who was on the ground was Jonasan and Liz.

"Come on Jonasan, you're riding with me." Liz said as she made her way towards Zenith.

"Nah, I'm good." Jonasan replied.

"What do you mean you're good?" Liz said, confused. "I know you can run pretty fast but there is no way that you can run fast enough to keep up with a dragon and a thunderbird. Now get over here and get on." Liz said as she got on Zenith's back.

The moment she did Zenith immediately took to the air much to Liz's surprise.

"Zenith?!"

"_He can handle himself, child, now let's go." _Zenith said, and headed off quickly followed by Kurisu and Draco, leaving Jonasan behind.

"Jade, track their distance." Jonasan said as he settled into a crouch.

_On it. five miles out._

"Play Track 5 in the Pursuit Playlist."

_Playing BT - Feed The Monster (Blue Stahli Remix). 30 miles out._

Nanobots began to build two headphones and as the music began to pump into his ears, Jonasan prepared to run.

_60 miles out._

The air around Jonasan began to crackle with static.

_90 miles out._

"Just a little more."

_120 miles out._

With a loud boom and a large cloud of dust, Jonasan took off at Mach 1 towards their destination, dodging past trees and other obstacles without slowing down, looking like a white blur as he tore across the landscape.

...

Now 150 miles out from Gran Crevasse, Liz looked back worriedly as she had yet to see anything remotely resembling her brother-in-law following behind them.

"Zenith, are you sure Jonasan is able to catch up with us?" Liz asked.

"_Of course I am child, I've traveled with him for several millennia so I do know what he is capable of." _Zenith responded.

_You need not worry Liz, my master is only about half a minute behind you, you should see him coming over the horizon now. _Jade said.

Glancing back again, Liz did see something appear from over the horizon, a white blur that was quickly catching up to them.

"What the...?" Liz asked.

"Sup guys. Told you I have my own way of keeping up." Jonasan said as he flew by them on the ground.

"How fast are you going?!" Delphinium asked in shock.

"Uhh, about Mach 1 I think?"

_Yes, Mach 1._ Jade confirmed.

"How!?" Zorome asked.

"Planets are exactly that small Zorome. When I was looking for Kurisu, I needed a method of rapid transversal and Lady Luck and Zenith weren't always around. Now granted it did take me a long, and I do mean long, time to build up to this but in the end, it's worth it."

"You are insane dear brother." Kurisu remarked.

"I haven't been diagnosed with insanity and you know it."

...

"Jade, about how fast are they going?" Jonasan asked as he ran.

_400.235 miles per hour. _Jade replied.

"So that would take them... what? 8 hours to get to the coast?"

_Standby... 8.85 hours exact._

"We left at 10 so that gives them an ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) of..."

_7:45 PM assuming that they won't stop for lunch, which they're going to have to. _

"And my current speed puts me there at about 2-ish."

_2:17 PM to be exact._

"Alright, that gives us about 5 hours to set up camp and get food ready. I can work with that."

(**A/N: **I've placed the city of Gran Crevasse near the western border of China so they have to cross the entirety of China as well as the East China Sea in order to reach the coordinates which are in Japan.)

...

**Time skip: 4 hours**

Four hours into the flight, Jonasan's voice came across communicators again via Jade.

"Hey guys, I've reached the coast and found a good place to stop for the night."

"'We're not stopping.'" Reaper and Zero Two said at the same time.

Jonasan sighed. "I understand that you guys are worried about your children, I really do, however, you have to think about conditions. By the time you get to me, you will have been flying for 8.85 hours, you're going to be tired and stiff and you don't want to be fighting like that. Now I don't know about Draco, but for Zenith flying for 8 hours straight at near maximum speed is exhausting. By the time you guys get to me, she isn't going to want to fly any further. It's also going to be near dark by the time you get to me and demons are stronger during the night so it's not the best time to attack."

Reaper growled but conceded the point. Zero Two took a bit more convincing from her squad mates before she finally agreed.

"I promise, you guys will thank me for this." Jonasan said. "Jade will guide you to me. By the time you get here I should have the camp set up and dinner almost ready."

...

**Time Skip: 4 hours**

"_I hate to sound like a whiny brat Liz but are we almost there?"_ Zenith asked.

Zenith's wingbeats had become sluggish, her flight pattern becoming unstable as she grew more tired, even her voice indicated her exhaustion. Draco wasn't faring much better.

Liz patted Zenith's back. "One more mile Zenith. We're almost there."

"_Good."_

Another mile passed before the group came across a large artificial clearing, a small group of tents was set up on one side along with a massive tent with a smoking chimney sticking out of it. The other side of the clearing was completely empty, the perfect place for the exhausted flyers to land. As they came in for a landing, Jonasan stepped out of the large tent to greet them.

As Liz hopped off of Zenith, Jonasan walked over to Zenith. She was minutely trembling.

"Are you alright mother?" Jonasan asked worriedly.

"_I'm fine child. Just get me some food and let me rest."_ Zenith replied.

"Alright." Jonasan muttered before turning to Draco. "Hey Draco, do you eat deer?"

Draco rumbled an affirmative and two white portals opened and 14 dead deer dropped out into two piles. Draco gave a nod of appreciation and lumbered over to a pile with Zenith not far behind him.

"Do you just have piles of dead deer in your storage?" Cypress asked.

Jonasan shook his head. "Not at all. They were just a herd that got spooked when I started to make the clearing, I knew they would be hungry when they landed so I killed them with magic and threw them in my storage."

"This is quite the large clearing Jonasan, there's even a small lake, was all this space really necessary?" Goro asked.

"Necessary? No. Wanted? Yes. I could have created a much smaller clearing, but it would have been very cramped, and Zenith likes her space. If it bothers you, I can cast a Reality Patch over the area to restore it when we leave."

"Reality patch?" Miku asked.

"I'll explain over dinner, come." Jonasan started to walk back towards the large tent. "I've made stroganoff!"

"You have just made my day." Kurisu said, practically drooling.

"What's stroganoff?" Futoshi asked.

Kurisu chuckled. "Oh, you're in for a treat. My brother makes the best stroganoff."

...

It was late in the night, nearly 11 PM. Reaper Beta had already gone to bed leaving only Reaper Alpha, Kurisu, Liz, and Jonasan awake within the large cook tent. Jonasan was finishing up cleaning the last of the dishes while the others were gathered around one of the tables strategizing. Jonasan had just finished cleaning the last pan when Reaper called him over.

"What's up?" Jonasan asked.

"How do you plan to break the barrier?" Cypress asked.

"I suppose now is as good of a time as any to explain. Jade, can you make a holoscreen for me?"

_One moment._

The nanobots quickly built a disk in Jonasan's hand and he threw it on the table, causing it to project a screen into the air.

"I won't try to explain it the proper way as that involves delving into quantum physics and explaining how the clashing of two realities causes micro fragmentation of the reality sphere which could lead to total collapse of all reality and instead explain it in terms of gravity." Jonasan said as the screen began to display the micro reality.

"The best way to think about this is like two opposing forces of gravity. Our reality exerts a force on the micro reality and the reality, in turn, exerts a stronger force back. Our reality reeeeeeeeealy doesn't like other realities forming within its domain so its constantly trying to destroy the micro reality but the micro reality is being supported by its caster so there's no real way for our reality to win without some outside help. To break the micro reality, it requires a two-step process. The first part is to introduce a random element into the barrier protecting the micro reality."

The screen showed a simulation of Jonasan casting a spell on the barrier.

"In this case, the random element will be chaos energy, which will throw the barrier into a state of flux, attempting to expunge the energy. The second step involves Jade and Complex 57."

"And what is Complex 57?" Raven asked.

"I was getting to that." Jonasan reassured. "Complex 57 is an orbital refinement facility that processes solar radiation to make something called Sterile Neutrinos. **Sterile Neutrinos are small particles that can warp reality."

"Hold on." Snake interrupted. "How come I've never heard of these particles before?"

"Sterile Neutrinos are a rare particle, but they aren't man-made if that's what you're wondering. Instances of sterile neutrinos are often confused with dark matter so most don't think that they exist. Sterile neutrinos are often what causes black holes to form that isn't from a collapsing star. Getting back on topic, once the barrier is thrown into flux by the chaos energy Jade will fire a short burst from Complex 57. This will look like a silvery black beam that will bore into the barrier, creating a hole. Once the hole is made, our reality will do the rest in destroying the barrier. Jade, how big is the barrier again?"

_The barrier is an oblong shape. About 5 miles long, 3 miles wide and about a mile high._

Jonasan muttered to himself for about a minute. "That should require about 1/3 of a tank. How much is in storage?"

_We have nearly a full tank._

"Ehh, won't hurt to have extras lying around."

...

It was now 1 AM and the only ones awake were Havana and Jonasan. Havana pulled the first watch and Jonasan was awake tinkering with some kind of plasma shotgun thing, his right eye turning electric blue occasionally. It was during one of the times Jade was examining the gun that Havana spoke up.

"Jonasan?" Havana asked.

"Hm?" Was his reply.

"Do you mind me asking a personal question?"

"Ask away, the answer will depend on the question." Jonasan said, distractedly.

"How did you lose your eye?"

"Ah, that." Jonasan said as he subconsciously touched below his cybernetic eye.

"I was out on a void world, a void world is a planet that is composed of nothing but its core and several large islands that are floating mid-air, and got attacked by a porcupine lizard thing about the size of a bus, called a Najevaka (Nah-Je-Va-Ka), by the locals. One of its attacks is that it fires a cloud of 30 cm needles and well, you can guess what happened."

Havana winced.

"The needles shredded my eye. Since magic can't heal heavily damaged complex organs, I numbed the nerves and staunched the bleeding before destroying the damn thing and hightailing it to the nearest galactic empire to seek treatment. Due to my status, I was immediately taken into surgery and had the eye installed."

"What all can it do?" Havana asked.

"Thermal, Bio, Xray, Night, and Jade Integration which gives me a HUD as well as zoom and enhancement functions."

There was silence for a while and Jonasan went back to work on his gun.

"Are ever going to go to bed tonight?"

"No."

...

*Camera shows Code 089 passed out at his desk in the Nexus with Emotion sitting quietly beside him*

Emotion: Ah hello. I have to apologize for our dear Author here. The last two months have been rather tiring for him due to the virus so if the chapter is sub-par he apologizes. The other Gods have been banished from the Nexus until 089 recovers so no craziness this time. 089 appreciates any reviews or criticism and any flames will be used to help kill the virus. Ciao!

* * *

*Credit to Reddit user KYZ123 for figuring out the height of a FranXX

**Yes, I know that this is not how Sterile Neutrinos are rumored to work in reality but this is how they work in this universe.


End file.
